


Class 
Book 




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COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS 



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A 



GENEliAL HISTOMY OF THE WOULD 



BY 



VICTOR DURUY 



FORMERLY MINISTER OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION AND MEMBER 
OF THE ACADEMY 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 



THOROUGHLY REVISED 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND A SUMMARY OF 
CONTEMPORANEOUS HISTORY (1848-1808) 

J5Y 

EDWIN A. GIlOSVENOFv 

PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN AMHERST COLLEGl 



NEW YORK: 46 East 14th Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

BOSTON: 100 Purchase Street 

■' - f ■ !S> ^ n ; 



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18516 



COPYRIQUT, 1898, 

By THOMAS Y. CKOWELL & CO. 







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NorfaJOoU 5P«33 

J. S. Gushing & Co. Berwick & Smith 

Norwood Mas8. U.S.A. 



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INTRODUCTION 



y^«<< 



To write a general history of the world is an appalling 
undertaking. The fewer the pages allowed, the more in- 
tricate that undertaking becomes. Out of the overwhelming 
mass of past events, the writer must discern the all-impor- 
tant and imperishable in the life of each people, and then 
flash it upon the page in language concise as an epigram. 
Comprehensive learning, keen discernment, philosophic 
accuracy and stainless impartiality are absolute essentials. 
Another requisite is that divine gift, the faculty of terse 
and pleasing expression. Moreover, the writer must be a 
man living among men. No recluse is competent to write 
history in the highest and noblest sense. Events must be 
marshalled like an army. It is not enough to line them up, 
soulless and listless, as in the dull sequence of the encyclo- 
paedia. The heart of the true historian must pulsate to the 
heart-beats of mankind. 

All these requirements M. Duruy possessed in preeminent 
degree. Minister of Public Instruction (1863-1869), he 
revolutionized historical education in France. Grand 
Officer of the Legion of Honor (1867), Senator of the Em- 
pire (1869), Member of the Academy (1884), he attained 
the highest grades of civic and literary distinction. But as 
a historian he won his permanent renown. A tireless stu- 
dent and author, during his life of over eighty years he 
knew no such thing as rest. The mere enumeration of his 
works is bewildering. Among them are a sacred history, 
based upon the Bible, a history of the Komans in seven 
volumes, of the Greeks in three volumes, of France in two 
volumes, of the Middle Ages and of modern times. Of 
his publications more than two million copies have been 
sold in France. 

This general history, up to 1848, embodies the condensed 
results of M. Duruy's researches and reflections. Never- 



IV INTRODUCTION 

tlieless, for two reasons thorough revision has been neces- 
sary. At times M. Duruy dwells on events, connected with 
France, at greater length than is desirable for us. Fur- 
thermore, history, like science, is progressive and never 
standing still. Not rarely does she change her verdicts in 
consequence of later light. In her domain, however often 
travelled over, discoveries are constant. Therefore I have 
abridged, enlarged or modified as I deemed best. Some few 
chapters I have entirely recast, among them that on ^'.The 
Three Eastern Questions." But, except with a careful and 
a reverent hand, I have touched no word which the great 
master wrote. 

The work of M. Duruy ends with the year 1848. The 
last quarter of the book — that devoted to " Contemporary 
History " and covering the last fifty years — is wholly my 
own. To write the story of to-day has been difficult. It 
has been none the less arduous because a delightful task. 
For aid in its treatment I have been indebted to many 
friends, and specially to Professor H. B. Adams, LL.D. of 
Johns Hopkins University. I have sought to continue the 
same system which, in the earlier portion of the volume, 
the French author follows so successfully and well. I have 
endeavored to avoid the mistakes consequent upon nearness, 
wherein the recent is prone to fill the sky, and have striven 
to observe just proportion between related facts. But the 
eye of a hundred years hence will mark and gauge the 
closing events of this century with clearer and wiser vision 
than can we. 

EDWIN A. GROSYENOR. 

Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.A. 
September 7, 1898. 



CONTENTS 



ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST 

PAG E 

I. The Beginning . 1 

The Earth. 

Man. 

Race and Language. 

The Black and Yellow Races. 

The White Race. The Aryans and Semites. 

Earliest Centres of Civilization. 

Primitive Books. 

II. China and the Mongols . . . . . . 8 

Great Antiquity of Chinese Civilization. 

Imperial Dynasties and Chinese Feudalism. 

The Great Wall and the Burning of the Books. Im- 
mense Extent of the Empire at the Beginning of 
our Era. 

Invasion of the Mongols in the Thirteenth Century. 

First Europeans in China. 

New Mongol Empire in Central Asia and India. 

China in Modern Times. 

Confucius and Chinese Society. 

III. India 16 

Contrast between India and China. 

Primitive Populations. The Aryans. The Vedas. 

History of India. 

The Castes. Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Sudras. 

Political Organization and Religion. 

Buddhism. 

IV. Egypt 24 

First Inhabitants. 

First Dynasties. 

Invasion of the Hyksos or Shepherds. 

Decline of Egypt. Invasion of the Ethiopians. 

The Last Pharaohs. 

Egypt under the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, 

and the Arabs. 
Egyptian Religion, Government, and Art. 



VI CONTENTS 



V. The Assyrians ........ 32 

The Tigris and the Euphrates. Babylon and Nineveh, 
Second Assyrian Empire. 

Last Assyrian Empire. Capture of Babylon by Cyrus. 
Government, Religion, and Arts of Assyria. 



VI. The Phcenicians 36 

Phoenician Cities betv^een Lebanon and the Sea. 
Phoenician Commerce and Colonies. 
Conquerors of Phoenicia. 

Vn. The Hebrews . 38 

Ancient Traditions. 
Religious and Civil Legislation. 
Moral Grandeur of Hebrew Legislation. 
Conquest of Palestine. The Judges. The Kings. 
The Schism and the Captivity. 

The Jews under the Persians, the Greeks, and the 
Romans. 

VIII. The Medes and Persians ,45 

Mazdeism. 

The Medes. 

The Persians under Cyrus. Conquest of Western Asia. 

The Persians under Cambyses and Darius. 

Government. 



HISTORY OF THE GREEKS 

I. Primitive Times ........ 51 

Ancient Populations. Pelasgi and Hellenes. 

Heroic Times. The Trojan War. 

The Dorian Invasion. Greek Colonies and Institutions. 

II. Customs and Religion of the Greeks ... 55 
Spirit of Liberty in Customs and Institutions. 
Religion. 

III. Lycurgus and Solon 60 

Sparta before Lycurgus. 

Lycurgus. His Political Ideas. 

Civil Laws. 

The Messenian Wars. 

Athens until the Time of Solon. The Archonship. 

Solon. 

The Pisistratidse. Clisthenes. Themistocles. 



CONTENTS Vll 



IV. The Persian Wars (492-449) 65 

Revolt of the Asiatic Greeks from the rersians. 

First Persian War. Marathon and Miltiades (490). 

Second Persian War. Salamis. 

Platsea. 

Continuance of the War by Athens. 

Last Victories of the Greeks. 

V. The Age of Pericles 68 

The Athenian People. 

Pericles. 

Great Intellects at Athens. 

The Parthenon. 

VI. Rivalry of Sparta, Athens, and Thebes (431-359) . 70 
Irritation of the Allies against Athens. 
The Peloponnesian AVar to the Peace of Nicias. 
The Sicilian Expedition. Alcibiades. 
The Battle of JKgos Potamos. Capture of Athens. 
Power of Sparta. Expedition of the Ten Thousand. 

Agesilaus. 
Treaty of Antalcidas. 
Struggle between Sparta and Thebes. Epaminondas. 

VII. Philip of Macedon and Demosthenes (359-336) . 75 

Philip. 

Capture of Aniphipolis. Occupation of Thessaly. 

Demosthenes. 

Second Sacred War. Battle of Chseronea. 

VIII. Alexander (336-323) 78 

Submission of Greece to Alexander (336-334). 

Expedition against Persia (334). Conquest of the 
Asiatic Coast and of Egypt. 

Conquest of Persia. Death of Darius. Murder of 
Clitus (334-327). 

Alexander beyond the Indus. His Return to Baby- 
lon, and Death (337-323). 

The Age of Alexander. 

IX. Conversion of Greece and of the Greek Kingdoms 

into Roman Provinces (323-146) ... 82 

Dismemberment of Alexander's Empire. 

Kingdoms of Syria (201-64) and of Egypt (301-30). 

Kingdom of Macedon (301-146). Cynocephalse and 
Pydnn. 

Death of Demosthenes (322). The Achaean League 
(251-146). 



viii CONTENTS 



PAGE 

X. Summary of Greek History 86 

Services rendered by the Greeks to General Civiliza- 
tion. 

Defects of the Political and Religious Spirit among 
the Greeks. 



HISTORY OF THE ROMANS 

I. Rome. The Ancient Roman Constitution (753-366) . 30 

The Royal Period (753-510). 

The Republic. Consuls. Tribunes. 

The Decemvirate and the Twelve Tables. 

The Plebeians attain Admission to All Offices. 

II. The Conquest of Italy (343-265) .... 94 

Capture of Rome by the Gauls (390). 
The Samnite Wars. 
Pyrrhus. 
The Gauls. 

III. The Punic Wars (264-146) 98 

First Punic War (264-241). Conquest of Sicily. 
War of the Mercenaries against Carthage (241-238). 
Second Punic War (218-201). 
Third Punic War (149-146) . Destruction of Carthage. 

IV. Foreign Conquests of Rome (229-129) . . .103 

Partial Conquest of ?Hvricum (229) and of Istria 

(217). 
The Conquerors of Asia Minor, Macedon, and Greece. 
Conquest of Spain (197-133). Viriathus. Numantia. 

V. First Civil Wars. The Gracchi. Marius. Sulla 

(133-79) 106 

Results of Roman Conquests on Roman Manners and 

Constitution. 
The Gracchi (133-121). 
Marius. Conquest of Numidia (118-104). 
Invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones (113-102). 
Renewal of Civil Troubles. Saturninus (106-98). 
Sulla. The Italian Revolt (98-88). 
Proscriptions in Rome. Sulpicius and Cinna (88-84). 
Victory of Sulla. His Proscriptions and Dictatorship 
-. (84-79). 

The Popular Party ruined by the Defeat of Sertorius 
(72). 



CONTENTS 



IX 



VI. Fkom Sulla to C.^sar, Pompey, and Cicero (79-60) . 115 

War against Mithridates under Sulla (90-84). 

War against Mithridates under LucuUus and Pompev 
(74-08). 

Revival of the Popular Party at Pome. The Gladia- 
tors (71). 

Alliance of Pompey with the Popular Party. War 
with the Pirates (07). 

Cicero. Conspiracy of Catiline (03). 

VII. Cesar (60-44) 121 

Csesar, Leader of the Popular Party. His Consulship 
(00). 

The Gallic War. Victories over the Helvetii, Ario- 
vistus, and the Belgse (58-57). 

Submission of Armoricum and Aquitaine. Expedi- 
tions to Britain and beyond the Rhine (50-53). 

General Insurrection. Vercingetorix. 

Defeat of Crassus by the Parthians (53). 

Civil War between Caesar and Pompey (49-48). 

War at Alexandria. Csesar Dictator (48-44). 

VIII. The Second Triumvirate . . . . . . 127 

Octavius. 

Second Triumvirate. Proscription. Battle of Philippi 
(42). 

Antony in the East. The Persian War. Treaty of 
Misenum (39). 

Wise Administration of Octavius. Expedition of An- 
tony against the Parthiaii^s. 

Actium. Death of Antony and Reduction of Egypt 
to a Province (30). 

IX. Augustus and the Julian Emperors (31 n.c. to 08 a.d.) 134 
Constitution of the Imperial Power (.30-12). 
Administration of Augustus in the Provinces and at 

Rome. 
Foreign Policy. Defeat of Varus (9 a.d.). 
Tiberius (14-37). 
Caligula (37-41). 
Claudius (41-54). 
Nero (54-08). 

X. The Flavians (09-96) 144 

Galba, Otho, and Vitellius (68-69). 
Vespasian (09-79). 
Titus (79-81). 
Domitian (81-96). 



X CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XI. The Antonines (96-192) 147 

Nerva (96-98). 
Trajan (98-117). 
Hadrian (117-138). 
Antoninus (138-161). 
Marcus Aurelius (161-180). 
Commodus (180-192). 

XII. Military Anarchy (192-285) 152 

Pertinax and Didius Julianus (192-193). 

Septimius Sever us (193-211). 

Caracalla (211-217). 

Macrinus (217). 

Heliogabalus (218-222). 

Alexander Severus (222-235). 

Six Emperors in Nine Years (235-244). 

Philip (244-249). Decius (249-251). The Thirty 

Tyrants (251-268). 
Claudius (268). Aurelian (270). Tacitus (275). 

Probus (275). Carus (282). 

XIII. Diocletian and Constantine (285-337). Christianity 159 

Diocletian (285-305). The Tetrarchy. 

New Emperors and Civil Wars (303-323). 

Christianity. 

Reoi-ganization of the Imperial Administration. 

Last Years of Constantine. 

XIV. CoNSTANTius (337). Julian. Theodosius . . . 170 

Constantius (337). , 

Julian (361). 

Jovian (363). Valentinian and Valens (364). 

Theodosius (378). 

End of the AVestern Empire (476). 

Summary. 



HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 

I. The Barbarian World in the Fourth and Fifth 

Centuries ........ 177 

Definition of the Middle Ages. 

The Northern Barbarians. Their Habits and Religion. 

Arrival of the Huns in Europe. 

Invasion of the Visigoths. Alaric. The Great Inva- 
sion of 406, 

Capture of Rome by Alaric (410). Kingdoms of the 
Visigoths, Suevi, a;id V^andals. 

Attila. 



CONTENTS xi 



PAGE 

II. Principal Barbarian Kingdoms. The Eastern 

Empire ......... 183 

Barbarian Kingdoms of Gaul, Spain, and Africa. 

Saxon Kingdoms in England. 

Kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Theodoric 

(489-526). 
Revival of the Eastern Empire. Justinian (527-565). 

III. Clovis and the Merovingians (481-752) . . . 187 

The Franks. 
Clovis. 

The Sons of Clovis (511-561). 
Fr(^d^gonde and Brunehaut. 
Clotaire II (584) and Dagobert (628). 
The Sluggard Kings. The Mayors of the Palace 
(638-687). - 

IV. Mohammed and the Arab Invasion .... 193 

Arabia. Mohammed and the Koran. 

The Caliphate. The Sumiites and Shiites. Arab 

Conquests (637-661). 
The Ommiades. 
Division of the Caliphate. 
Arabic Civilization. 

V. The Empire of the Franks. Efforts to Introduce 

Unity in Church and State .... 200 

Difference between the Arab and Germanic Invasions. 
Ecclesiastical Society. 

Charles Martel and Pepin the Short (715-768). 
Charlemagne, King of the Lombards and Patrician 

of Rome (774). 
Conquest of Germany (771-804). Spanish Expedition. 
Limits of the Empire. 
Charlemagne Emperor (800). 
Government. 

VI. The Last Carlovingians and the Northmen . . 209 

Weakness of the Carlovingian Empire. Louis the 

Debonair. 
The Treaty of Verdun (843). 
Charles the Bald (840-877). 
Progress of Feudalism. 

Deposition of Charles the Fat. Seven Kingdoms. 
Eudes and the Last Carlovingians (887-987). 

VII. The Third Invasion 214 

The New Invasion. 

The Northmen in France. 



xii CONTENTS 



The Northmen Danes in England. 

The Northmen in the Polar Regions and in Russia. 

The Saracens and the Hungarians. 

VIII. Feudalism . \ 219 

Feudalism or the Heredity of Offices and Fiefs. 
Civilization from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. 

IX. The German Empire. Struggle between the Papacy 

AND the Empire 227 

Germany from 887 to 1056. 

The Monk Hildebrand. 

Gregory VII and Henry IV (1073-1085). 

Concordat of Worms (1122). 

The Hohenstaufens. 

X. Crusades in the East and in the West . . . 235 

The First Crusade in the East (1096-1099). 
Second and Third Crusades (1147-1189). 
Fourth Crusade (1203). Latin Empire of Constan- 
tinople. 
Last Crusades (1229-1270). Saint Louis. 
Results of the Crusades in the East. 
Crusades of the West. 

XI. Society in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 247 

Progress of the Urban Population. 
Intellectual Progress. 
National Literatures. 

XII. Formation of the Kingdom of France (987-1328) . 251 

First Capetians (987-1108). 

Louis the Fat (1108-1137). 

Louis VII (1137-1180). 

Philip Augustus (1180). 

Louis VIII (1223) and Saint Louis (1226). 

Victory of Taillebourg (1242). Moderation of Saint 

Louis. 
Philip III (1270) and Philip IV (1285). 
Quarrel between the King and the Pope. 
Condemnation of the Templars. 
Last Direct Capetians. The SaHc Law (1314-1328). 

XIII. Formation of the English Constitution . . . 258 

Norman Invasion (1066). 

Force of Norman Royalty in England. 

William II (1087). Henry I (1100). Stephen (1135). 

Henry II (1154). 



CONTENTS Xlll 



Richard (1189). John Lackland (1199). 
Henry III (1210). 
First English Parliament (1258). 
Progressof English Institutions. 

XIV. First Period of the Hundred Years' War (1328- 

1380) 264 

Causes of the Hundred Years' War. 

Hostilities in Flanders and Britain (1337). 

Battle of Crecy (1316). 

John the Good. Battle of Poitiers (1356). 

Attempt at Reforms. The Jacquerie. 

Treaty of Br^tigny (1360). 

Charles V and Duguesclin. 

XV. Second Period of the Hundred Years' War (1380- 

1453) 268 

Charles VI. 

The Armagnacs and the Burgundians. John the 

Fearless. 
Insurrection in England. Wickliffe. 
Richard II (1380). 
Henry IV. Battle of Agincourt (1415). Treaty of 

Troyes (1420). 
Charles VII and Joan of Arc. 
Reforms and Success of Charles VII. 

X VI. Spain and Italy (1250-1453) 273 

Domestic Troubles in Spain. 

The Kingdom of Naples under Charles of Anjou (1265). 
Italian Republics. Guelphs and Ghibellines. 
Return of the Papacy to Rome (1578). The Princi- 
palities. 
The Aragonese at Naples. 
Brilliancy of Letters and Arts. 

XV^IL Germany and the Scandinavian, Slavic, and Turk- 
ish States (1250-1453) 280 

The Interregnum. The House of Hapsburg. 

Switzerland. Battle of Morgarten (1315). 

Powerlessness of the Emperors. 

Union of Calmar (1397). 

Strength of Poland. 

The Mongols in Russia. 

The Ottoman Turks at Constantinople (1453). 

XVIII. Summary op the Middle Ages 286 



XIV CONTENTS 



HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES 

PAGE 

I. Progress of Royalty in France .... 289 

Principal Divisions of Modern History. 

Louis XI (1461-1483). League of Public Welfare 

(1465). 
Interview of P^ronne (1468). 
Death of the Duke of Guyenne (1472). 
Mad Enterprises and Death of Charles the Bold 

(1477). 
Union of the Great Fiefs with the Crown. 
Administration of Louis XI. 
Charles VIII (1483). 

II. Progress of Royalty in England. War op the 

Roses 295 

Henry VI. Richard of York, Protector (1454). 
Edward IV (1460). 
Richard III (1483). 
Henry VII (1485). 

III. Progress of Royalty in Spain 299 

Abandonment of the Crusade against the Moors. 
Marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of 

Castile (1469). 
Conquest of Granada (1492). 
The Inquisition. The Power of Royalty. 
Progress of Royalty in Portugal. 

IV. Germany and Italy from 1453 to 1494 . . . 303 

Frederick III (1440) and Maximilian (1493). 
Italy. Republics replaced by Principalities. 

V. The Ottoman Turks (1453-1520) 307 

Strong Military Organization of the Ottomans. Mo- 
hammed II. 
Bayezid II (1481). Selim the Ferocious (1512). 

VI. Wars in Italy. Charles VIII and Louis XII . . 310 

Consequences of the Political Revolution. The First 

European Wars. 
Expedition of Charles VIII into Italy (1494). 
Louis XII (1498). Conquest of Milan and Naples. 
League of Cambrai (1508). The Holy League (1511). 
Invasion of France (1513). Treaties of Peace (1514). 



CONTENTS XV 

PAGE 

VII. The Economical Revolution 314 

Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope (1497). 
Colonial Empire of the Portuguese. 
Christopher Columbus. Colonial Empire of the Span- 
iards. Kesults. 

VIII. The Revolution in Arts and Letters, or the Renais- 
sance . . . . . . . . . 318 

Invention of Printing. 
Renaissance of Letters. 
Renaissance of Arts, 
Renaissance in Science. 

IX. The Revolution in Creeds, or the Reformation . 321 

The Clergy in the Sixteenth Century. 

Luther (1517). 

The Lutheran Reformation in the Scandinavian States. 

The Reformation in Switzerland. Zwingii (1517), 
Calvin (153G). 

The Reformation in the Netherlands, France, Scot- 
land, and England. 

Character of the Three Reformed Churches. 

Consequences of the Reformation. 

X, The Catholic Restoration 329 

Reforms at the Pontifical Court and in the Church. 

The Jesuits. 
Council of Trent (1545-1563). 

XL New Wars in Italy, Francis I, Charles V, and 

Souleiman I 332 

Francis I, Victory of Marignano (1515). 

Power of Charles V, 

Pavia (1525). Treaties of Madrid (1526) and Cam- 

brai (1529). 
Alliances of Francis I, Successes of Souleiman I, 
New War between Charles V, and Francis I. 
Abdication of Charles V (1556). 
Continuation of the Struggle between the Houses 

of France and Austria (1558-1559), 

XIL The Religious Wars in Western Europe (1559-1598) 339 
Philip 11. 

Character of this Period. 
France the Principal Battlefield of the Two Parties. 

The First War (1562-1563). 
Successes of Catholicism in the Netherlands and 
France (1564-1568). The Blood Tribunal (1567). 



xvi CONTENTS 



Dispersion of the Forces of Spain. Victory of Le- 

panto (1571). 
Catholic Conspiracies in England and in France. 
Progress of the Protestants (1573-1587). 
Defeat of Spain and of Ultramontanism (1588-1598). 

XIII. Results of the Religious Wars in Western Eu- 

rope 349 

Decline and Ruin of Spain. 
Prosperity of England and Holland. 
Reorganization of France by Henry IV (1598-1610). 

XIV. The Religious Wars in Central Europe, or the 

Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) . . . .353 

Preliminaries of the Thirty Years' War (1555-1618). 
Palatine Period (1618-1625). 
Danish Period (1625-1629). 
Swedish Period (1630-1635). 
French Period (1635-1648). 

XV. Results of the Religious Wars in Central 

Europe 358 

Peace of Westphalia (1648). 

Advantages won by the Protestants. Religious Inde- 
pendence of the German States. 
Political Independence of the German States. 
Acquisitions of Sweden and France. 

XVI. Richelieu and Mazarin. Completion op Monarch- 
ical France (1610-1661) 360 

Minority of Louis XIII (1610-1617). 

Richelieu humiliates the Protestants and the High 

Nobility. 
Mazarin and the Fronde. 
Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659). 

XVII. England from 1603 to 1674 365 

Europe in 1661. 

James I (1603-1625). 

Charles I (1625-1649). 

The Civil War (1642-1647). 

Execution of Charles I. 

The Commonwealth of England (1649-1660). 

Charles II (1660-1685). 

XVIII. Louis XIV from 1661 to 1685 372 

Colbert. 
Louvois. 



CONTENTS 



XVll 



War with Flanders (1667). 

War with Holland (1672). 

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). 

XIX. The English Revolution (1688) ... . .377 

Reawakening of Liberal Ideas in England (1673-1679). 
Catholic and Absolutist Reaction. James II (1685). 
Fall of James II (1688). Declaration of Rights. 

William III (1689). 
A New Political Right. 

XX. Coalitions against France (1688-1714) . . .380 
Formation of the League of Augsburg (1686). 
War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697). 
War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). 
Treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastadt (1714). 
Louis XIV the Personification of Monarchy by Divine 
Right. 

XXI. Art, Literature, and Science in the Seventeenth 

Century 385 

Letters and Arts in France. 
Letters and Arts in Other Countries. 
Science in the Seventeenth Century. 

XXII. Creation of Russia. Downfall of Sweden . . 389 
The Northern States at the Beginning of the Eigh- 
teenth Century. 
Peter the Great (1682). 

XXIII. Creation of Prussia. Decline of France and Aus- 
tria 393 

Regency of the Duke of Orleans. Ministries of 
Dubois, the Duke of Bourbon, and Fleury (1715- 
1743). 

Formation of Prussia. 

Maria Theresa and Frederick II. The War of the 
Austrian Succession (1741-1748). 

The Seven Years' War (1756-1763). 



XXIV. Maritime and Colonial Power of England 
England from 1688 to 1763. 
The English East India Company, 



399 



XXV. Foundation of the United States of America 

Origin and Character of the English Colonies in 

America. 
The Revolutionary War (1775-1783). 
Washington. The Part of France in the War. 



402 



CONTENTS 



PAGB 

XXVI. Destruction of Poland. Decline of the Otto- 
mans. Greatness of Russia .... 405 
Catherine II (1761) and Frederick II. First Parti- 
tion of Poland (1773). 
Treaties of Kainardji (1774) and Jassy (1792). 
Second and Third Partitions of Poland (1793-1795). 
Attempt at Dismembering Sweden. 



XXVII. Preliminaries of the French Revolution . 

Scientific and Geographical Discoveries. 
Letters in the Eighteenth Century. 
Disagreement between Ideas and Institutions. 
Reforms effected by Governments. 
Last Years of Louis XV (1763-1774). 
Louis XVI. 



408 



XXVm. The Revolution (1789-1792) 413 

Divine Right and National Sovereignty. 

The Constituent Assembly until the Capture of the 
Bastile. 

The Days of October. The Emigrants. The Con- 
stitution of 1791. 

XXIX. Ineffectual Coalition of the Kings against the 

Revolution (1792-1802) 420 

The Legislative Assembly (1791-1 '92). 

Effect outside of France produced by the Revolu- 
tion. The First Coalition (1791). 

The Commune of Paris. The Days of June 20 and 
August 10, 1792. The Massacres of September. 

Invasion of France. Defeat of the Prussians at 
Valmy, September 20, 1792. 

The Convention (1792-1795). Proclamation of the 
French Republic (September 21, 1792). Death 
of Louis XVI. 

The Reign of Terror. 

The Ninth of Thermidor, or July 27, 1794. 

Glorious Campaigns of 1793-1795. 

Campaigns of Bonaparte in Italy (1796-1797). 

The Egyptian Expedition (1798-1799). Second 
Coalition. Victory of Zurich. 

Internal Anarchy. The Eighteenth of Brumaire, 
or November 9, 1799. 

Another Constitution, The Consulate. 

Marengo. Peace of Lun^ville (1801) and of Amiens 
(1802). 

XXX. Greatness of France (1802-1811) . ., . . 437 
The Consulate for Life, 
Bonaparte Hereditary Emperor (May 18, 1804). 



CONTENTS 



XIX 



Third Coalition. Austerlitz and the Treaty of 

Presburg (1805). 
The Confederation of the Rhine and the Vassal 

States of the Empire. 
Jena (1806) and Tilsit (1807). 
The Continental Blockade. 
Invasion of Spain (1807). 
Wagram (1809). 

XXXI. Victorious Coalition of Peoples and Kings 

AGAINST Napoleon (1811-1815) . . . .446 

Popular Reaction against the Spirit of Conquest 
represented by Napoleon. 

Preparations for Insurrection in Germany. 

Progress of Liberal Ideas in Europe. 

Formation or Awakening of the Nations. 

Moscow (1812). Leipsic (1813). Campaign in 
France (1814). 

The First Restoration. The Hundred Days. Water- 
loo (1814-1815). 

XXXII. Reorganization op Europe at the Congress of 

Vienna. The Holy Alliance .... 455 

The Congress of Vienna. 
The Holy Alliance (1815). 

XXXIII. Secret Societies and Revolutions (1815-1824) . 461 

Character of the Period between 1815 and 1830. 

Efforts to preserve or Reestablish the Old Regime, 
Peculiar Situation of France from 1815 to 1819. 

Alliance of the Altar and the Throne. The Con- 
gregation. 

Liberalism in the Press, and Secret Societies. 

Plots (1816-1822). Assassinations (1819-1820). 
Revolutions (1820-1821). 

The Holy Alliance acts as the Police of Europe. 
Expedition of Italy (1821) and of Spain (1823). 

Charles X (1824). 

XXXIV. Progress of Liberal Ideas 480 

The Romantic School. The Sciences. 
Formation in France of a Legal Opposition. 
Huskisson and Canning in England (1822). New 

Foreign Policy. Principle of Non-intervention. 
Independence of the Spanish Colonies (1824). 

Constitutional Empire of Brazil (1822). Liberal 

Revolution in Portugal (1826). 
Liberation of Greece (1827). 
Destruction of the Janissaries (1826). Success of 

the Russians (1828-1829). 
Summary. State of the World in 1828. 



zx 



CONTENTS 



XXXV. New and Impotent Efforts of the Ancient 
Regime against the Liberal Spirit . 

Dom Miguel in Portugal (1828). Don Carlos in 
Spain (1827). 

The Wellington Ministry (1828). The Diet of 
Frankfort. 

The Tsar Nicholas. 

The Polignac Ministry (1829). Capture of Al- 
giers (1830). 

The Revolution of 1830. 



493 



XXXVI. 



XXXVII. 



XXXVIII. 



Consequences of the Revolution or July in 
France. Struggle between the Liberal 
Conservatives and the Republicans (1830- 
1840) ........ 498 

Character of the Period comprised between 1830 
and 1840. 

King Louis Philippe. 

The Latitte Ministry (1830). 

The Casimir-P^rier Ministry (1831). 

Success Abroad. 

Insurrections at Lyons and at Paris (1834). 
Attempt of Fieschi (1835). 

The Thiers Ministry (1836). 

The Mol6 Ministry (1836-1837). 

Ministry of Marshal Soult (1839). 

Consequences in Europe of the Revolution of 

July (1830-1840) 507 

General State of Europe in 1830. 

England. Whig Ministry (1830). The Reform 

Bill (1831-1832). 
Belgian Revolution (August and September, 

1830). 
Liberal Modifications in the Constitutions of 

Switzerland (1831), Denmark (1831), and 

Sweden. 
Revolutions in Spain (1833) and Portugal (1834). 

Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance (1834). 
Impotent Efforts of the Liberals in Germany and 

Italy (1831). Defeat of the Polish Insurrection 

(1831). 



The Three Eastern Questions (1832-1848) 
Interests of the European Powers in Asia. 
The First Eastern Question : Constantinople. 
Decline of Turkey. Power and Ambition of the 

Viceroy of Egypt. 
Conquest of Syria by Ibrahim Pasha (1832). 

Treaty of Hunkiar Iskelessi (1833). 



518 



CONTENTS XXI 

PAOS 

The Treaty of London (1840) and the Treaty of 

the Straits (1841). 
The Second Eastern Question : Central Asia. 
Progress of the Russians in Asia. 
Indirect Struggle between the English and the 

Russians in Central Asia. 
The Third Eastern Question : The Pacific Ocean. 
Isolation of China and Japan. 
Opium War (1840-1843). 
Treaty of France with China (1844). 
Russia and China. 
Summary of the Three Eastern Questions in 1848. 

XXXIX. Preliminaries of the Revolution of 1848 . . 532 

Character of the Period comprised between 1840 

and 1848. Progress of Socialistic Ideas. 
France from 1840 to 1846. 
England. Free Trade. The Income Tax and the 

New Colonial System (1841-1849). 
Establishment of the Constitutional System in 

Prussia (1847). Liberal Agitations in Austria 

and in Italy. 

XL. America from 1815 to 1848 544 

American Progress. The Monroe Doctrine. Ad- 
vantage of Liberty . 

XLL The Revolution of 1848 547 



CONTEMPORARY HISTORY 

I. The Revolution of 1848 in its Influence upon 

Europe 551 

Contemporary History. 

Outbreak at Vienna and Fall of Metternich. 

Troubles in Bohemia. 

Revolt in Hungary. 

Commotions in Italy. 

Popular Demands in Prussia and in Other German 

States. 
The German National Assembly. 

XL The Second French Republic (1848-1852) . . 557 
The Provisional Government. 
Barricades of June. 
General Discontent. 
Presidency of Louis Napoleon. 
The Coup d'Etat. 



xxii CONTENTS 



PAGE 

III. Triumph of Reaction in Europe (1848-1851) . . 561 

Subjugation of Hungary. 

Return to Absolutism in Austria. 

Defeat and Abdication of Charles Albert. 

Conservatism of Pius IX. 

Dissolution of the General Assembly at Frankfort. 

IV. The Second French Empire (1852-1870) . . .567 

The Plebiscites of 1851 and 1852. 

The Crimean War (1853-1856). 

War with Austria (1859). 

Material Progress (1852-1867). 

The Universal Exposition of 1867. 

Humiliations of the Empire. 

The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). 

Sedan. 

Fall of the Empire (September 4, 1870). 

Surrender of Metz (October 27, 1870). 

Siege and Surrender of Paris (January 28, 1871). 

Treaty of Frankfort. 

V. Germany (1848-1871) . 580 

Rivalry of Prussia and Austria. 

Question of Schleswig-Holstein (1848-1855). 

King William I and Otto von Bismarck. 

Austro- Prussian Occupation of Schleswig-Holstein 

(1863-1864). 
Seven Weeks' War between Prussia and Austria. 

(1866). 
Sadowa (July 3, 1860). 
Hegemony of Prussia (1866-1871). 
Unification of Germany (1871). 

VI. The Third French Republic (1870-1898) . . .587 
The Commune (March 18-May 28, 1871). 
M. Thiers, President of the Republic (1871-1873). 
Presidency of Marshal MacMahon (1873-1879). 
Presidency of M. Gr^vy (1879-1887). 
Presidency of M. Sadi Carnot (1887-1894). 
Presidency of M. Casimir-P^rier (1894). 
Presidency of M. Faure (1895- ). 
France in 1898. 

VII. The German Empire (1871-1898) . . . . .600 
The Imperial Constitution. 

The Alliance of the Three Emperors (1871-1876). 
Organization of Alsace-Lorraine (1871). 
The Culturkampf (1873-1887). 
Economic Policy (1878-1890). 



CONTENTS XXIII 



The Triple Alliance (1879- ). 

Death of Emperor William I (March 9, 1888). 

Frederick I (1888). 

Reign of William II (1888- ). 

VIII. Italy 607 

Condition of the Italian Peninsula in 1850. 

Count Cavour. 

Piedmont in the Crimean War (1855-1856). 

The War of 1859. 

Successful Revolutions. Victor Emmanuel and Gari- 
baldi (1859-1805). Alliance with Prussia against 
Austria (1866). 

Rome the Capital of Italy (1870). 

The Last Bays of Victor Emmanuel (1870-1878). 

The Reign of King Humbert (1878- ). 

Italia Irredenta. 

IX. Austria-Hungary ........ 616 

Accession of Francis Joseph (1848). 
Austrian Absolutism (1850-1866). 
The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Political Re- 
forms (1866). 
Acquisition of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878). 
Austria-Hungary from 1878 to 1898. 
Political Problems of To-day. 

X. Russia .623 

Nicholas I (1825-1855). 

The Crimean War (1853-1856). 

Alexander II (1855-1881). 

Revision of the Treaty of Paris (1871). 

The Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878). 

The Congress of Berlin (1878). 

The Nihilists. 

Reign of Alexander III (1881-1894). 

Nicholas II (1894- ). 

XL The Ottoman Empire 635 

The Hatti Sherif of Ghul Khaneh (1839). 

Massacres in the Lebanon (1845). 

Question of the Holy Places. The Crimean War 

(1853-1856). 
The Hatti Humayoun (1856). 
Massacres at Djeddah (1858) and in Syria (1860). 

European Intervention. 
Sultan Abd-ul Aziz (1861-1876). 



XXIV CONTENTS 



The Insurrection of Crete (1866-1868). 

Opening of the Suez Canal (November 17, 1869). 

Foreign Loans and Bankruptcy. 

Death of Sultan Abd-ul Aziz (May 27, 1876). 

The Reign of Sultan Abd-ul Hamed II (1876- ). 

XII. The Balkan States 649 

The Five States. 

Roumania. 

Montenegro. 

Servia. 

Bulgaria. 

Greece. 

XIII. The Smaller European States 662 

Denmark. 

Sweden and Norway. 
Switzerland. 
Belgium. 

The Netherlands or Holland. 

The Five Smaller European States and the Five 
Balkan States. 

XIV. Spain and Portugal 669 

Reign of Isabella II (1833-1868). 

Revolution (1868). Experiments at Government 

(1868-1875). 
Restoration of the Dynasty (1875). Reign of Al- 

phonso XII (1875-1885). 
Regency of Queen Maria Christina (1885- ). 
Cuba. War with the United States (1898). 
Portugal. Death of Dona Maria da Gloria (1853). 
Peaceful Development of Portugal. 

XV. Great Britain 678 

The British Empire. 
Great Britain in 1848. 
Repeal of the Navigation Laws (1849). 
. The Great Exhibition (1851). 

The Part of Great Britain in the Crimean War (1853- 

1856). 
Wars with Persia (1857) and China (1857-1860). 
The Indian Mutiny (1857-1858). 
Lord Palmerston Prime Minister (1859-1865). Lord 

Russell Prime Minister (October, 1865-July, 1866). 
The American Civil War (1861-1865). 
Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli Prime Ministers (July, 

1866-November, 1868). 



CONTENTS XXV 



Second Reform Bill (1867). 

Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister (December, 1868-Feb- 

ruary, 1874). The Irish Question. The Alabama 

Claims. 
Second Prime Ministry of Mr. Disraeli (February, 

1874-April, 1880). 
Second Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone (April, 1880- 

June, 1885). 
Occupation of Egypt (1882). General Gordon. 
Third Reform Bill (June, 1885). 
First Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (June, 1885- 

February, 1886). Third Prime Ministry of Mr. 

Gladstone (February, 1886-August, 1886). The 

Irish Home Rule Bill. 
Second Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (August, 

1886-August, 1892). 
Fourth Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone (August, 

1892-March, 1894). Lord Rosebery Prime Minis- 
ter (March, 1894- June, 1895). 
Third Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (June, 

1895- ). 
Characteristics of the Reign of Queen Victoria. 
Mr. Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) and Mr. Gladstone. 

XVI. Partition op Africa, Asia, and Oceania . . . 691 

Seizure of Unoccupied Territory. 

Occupation of Africa. 

The Boer Republics. 

Occupation of Asia. 

The Route to India. 

Occupation of Oceania. 

Results of Territorial Expansion. 

XVII. The United States 700 

American History. 

Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo (1848). The Gadsden 

Purchase (1853). 
The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850). 
Complications with Austria (1849-1854). 
The Ostend Manifesto (1854). 
Expedition of Commodore Perry to Japan (1852- 

1854). 
The United States and China (1858- ). 
The Civil War (1861-1865). 
Question of the Northwestern Boundary (1872). 
The Newfoundland Fisheries. The Halifax Award 

(1877). 
The Centennial Exhibition (1876). 
The Presidential Election of 1876. 



XXVI CONTENTS 



Assassination of President Garfield (1881). 

Civil Service Reform Bill (1883). 

The Bering Sea Controversy over the Seal Fishery 

(1886- ). 
Trouble with Chili (1891-1892). 
The Columbian Exhibition (1893). 
The Venezuelan Message (December 17, 1895). 
Annexation of Hawaii (1898). 
The War with Spain (1898). 

INDEX 711 



LIST OF MAPS 



The World as kxovvn to the Ancients 

Egypt 

Kingdom of David and Solomon 

Ancient Greece 

Athens ..... 



Empire of Alexander 

Italy divided by Augustus into Eleven Regions 

Ancient Rome 

The Roman Ejipire under Augustus 
The Countries where the Apostles preached 
The Roman Empire and the Barbarian World 
Europe at the Death of Justinian 
The Arabian Empire about 750 
Empire of Charlejiagne .... 
Europe during the Crusades, 1095 to 1270 
Italy in the Fifteenth Century . 
France under Louis XI .... 
Voyages and Discoveries 
Europe at the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648 
Central Europe, indicating Battlefields and 
Places, from 1792 to 1813 

Europe in 1812 

Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 
Europe in 1898 . 
Italy in 1859 
The British Isles 
Asia . ... 



The United States 



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ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST 



THE BEGINNING 

The Earth. — Every primitive religion has sought to 
explain God, the world, the creation of man, and the co- 
existence on earth of good and evil. Therefore all ancient 
peoples had or still preserve pious legends in harmony with 
their country and climate, their customs and social state; 
that is to say, with the conditions under which they lived, 
felt, thought, and believed. Of these early narratives the 
most simple and the grandest is Genesis, the sacred book 
of the Jews and Christians. 

Science, in its turn, seeks to fathom those mysteries, 
although the origin of things must forever elude it. It 
indeed renounces the task of solving questions which faith 
alone must decide. Yet, by a magnificent effort of exam- 
ination and comparison, it has succeeded in acquiring a mass 
of truths, the discovery of which would prove the greatness 
of man, were not his littleness demonstrated every moment 
by the infinity of time and space into which his gaze and 
thought plunge Avith an insatiable and too often powerless 
curiosity. 

Our solar system, with all the stars which compose it, is 
only a speck in immensity. According to the hypothesis 
of Laplace, which nothing so far has disproved, those stars 
themselves originally formed but a single whole. It was 
one of those prodigious nebulse, such as are still seen in the 
vastitude of the heavens, and are probably so many suns in 
process of formation. Our nebula became concentrated 
into a focus of heat and light, but as it followed its path 
through space, it now and again threw off masses of cosmic 
matter which formed the planets. The latter, as if demon- 

B 1 



2 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST 

strating their origin, still revolve in the orbit of the sun 
from which they emanated. 

The globe which we inhabit is therefore a tiny fragment 
of the sun, which extinguished as it cooled and enveloped 
itself successively in a gaseous ocean, the atmosphere; 
then in a liquid ocean, the sea; and finally in a solid crust, 
the land, the highest points of which emerge above the 
waves. 

Animal life awoke first in the bosom of the waters, where 
it was represented in most ancient times, thousands of cen- 
turies ago, by species intermediate between the vegetable 
and animal, and analogous to corals and sponges. Then 
came molluscs, Crustacea, and the first fishes. At the same 
time the seaweeds had their birth in shallow waters. 
Meanwhile the air, saturated with carbonic acid and nitro- 
gen, developed upon the half-submerged land a mighty 
vegetation, wherein predominated those tree-ferns and 
calamites whose remains we find in mines of anthracite and 
bituminous coal. 

Thus in the animal and vegetable kingdoms the simplest 
organisms were produced. Time passed, many thousand 
centuries elapsed, but the work of creation went on. 
Ancient forms were changed or new forms were created. 
The organism became complicated; functions were multi- 
plied; life took possession of the earth, the sea, and the 
air, blossoming in greater variety of forms, and richer and 
more powerful in its means of action. At last man appeared, ' 

Thus, continual ascent toward a more perfect life seems 
to have been the law of the physical as it was, later on, of 
the intellectual world. During the geological period nature 
was modifying the organism, and hence the functions, and 
was developing instinct, that first gleam of intelligence. 
In the historical period, civilization modifies social order 
and develops human faculties. In the first case, progress 
is marked by change of form ; in the second, by change of 
ideas. 

Man. — At what epoch did man make his appearance upon 
the earth? Hardly more than half a century ago unlooked- 
for discoveries shattered all the old systems of chronology, 
and proved that man himself had part in the geological 
evolutions of our globe. Flints and bones shaped into axes, 
knives, needles, arrow heads, and spear heads; bones of 
huge animals cleft lengthwise, so that the marrow might 



THE BEGINNING 3 

be extracted for nourishment; heaps of shells and debris 
of repasts; ashes, the evident remains of antediluvian 
hearths ; even pictures traced on shoulder bones and slate 
rocks, representing animals now extinct or seen only in 
places very distant from those they then inhabited; finally, 
human remains found unquestionably in the deposits of the 
quaternary epoch, and traces of human industry, which 
seem to be detected even in the tertiary strata, — prove that 
man lived at a time when our continents had neither the 
fauna, the flora, the climate, nor the shape which they have 
to-day. • . 

The most numerous discoveries have been made in 
France. But, on the slopes of Lebanon as in the caves of 
Perigord, in the valleys of the Himalayas as in those of 
the Pyrenees, on the banks of the Missouri as on those 
of the Somme, primitive man appears with the same arms, 
the same customs, the same savage and precarious life, 
which certain tribes of Africa, Australia, and the New 
World still preserve under our ver}^ eyes. The future king 
of creation was as yet only its most miserable product. 
Thus, science has moved back the birth of mankind toward 
an epoch when the measure of time is no longer furnished, 
as in our day, by a few generations of men, but where we 
must reckon by hundreds of centuries. This is the Stone 
Age. It is already possible for us to divide it into many 
periods, each showing progress over the one preceding. 
We begin with stones roughly fashioned into implements 
and weapons, and with caverns which serve for refuge ; we 
reach stones artistically worked and polished, pottery 
shaped by hand and even ornamented, and lake cities or 
habitations raised on piles ; at last we arrive at dolmens 
and menhirs, those so-called druidic monuments which were 
formerly recognized only in France and England, but which 
now are found almost everywhere. Thus the first man 
recedes and becomes lost in a vague and appalling antiquity. 

Do all men descend from a single pair? Yes, if we de- 
termine the unity of the species from the sole consideration 
that intermarriage of any two varieties of the human race 
may result in offspring. Nevertheless, physiology and 
linguistic science set forth very wide differences between 
the various branches of the human family. 

Bace and Language. — Intermarriage and the influence of 
habitation, that is, of soil and climate, have produced many 



4 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST 

• varieties of race. These are generally grouped in three 
principal classes, the White, the Yellow, and the Black. 
To them may be added a number of intermediate shades 
arising from amalgamations that have taken place on the 
borders of the three dominant classes. If all spring from 
a common origin, they have none the less developed in dis- 
tinct regions: the White, or Caucasian, on the table-land 
of Iran, whence it reached India, Western Asia, and all 
Europe; the YelT jw, or Mongolian, in China, in Northern 
Asia, and thv, ^.tialay peninsula; the Black in Africa and 
Austrpjia,. This race is regarded by certain authors as 
descending from an earlier creation of mankind. The 
aborigines of America appear to have Mongolian blood. 

Languages are also classed in three great groups, the 
monosyllabic, the agglutinative, and the inflected. The 
first class possesses only roots, which are at once both nouns 
and verbs, and which the voice expresses by a single sound, 
but the meaning of which varies according to position in 
the sentence and the relation they sustain to other words. 
In the second class the root does not change, but is built 
upon by the juxtaposition of particles that are easily rec- 
ognized and answer all grammatical demands. In the third 
class the root undergoes modifications of form, sound, 
accent, and meaning. In this way the noun is made to 
express gender, number, and relation ; and the verb, tense, 
and mode. Hence the inflected languages are the most 
perfect medium for the expression and development of 
ideas. 

All the languages spoken on the globe, whether in former 
times or to-day, represent one of these j)hases. The white 
race, being the most developed, employs the third. The 
Turanian idioms (Tartar, Turkish, Finnish), those of the 
African tribes, and of the American Indians, belong to 
the second. The ancient Chinese stopped at the first phase. 
Their descendants advance slowly toward the second, retain- 
ing for their written language some fifty thousand ideo- 
graphic characters, each of which was, like the Egyptian 
hieroglyphics, originally the image of an object or the con- 
ventional representation of an idea. 

The Black and Yellow Races. — History preserves no 
narrative of the Black Race, whose existence, passed in the 
depths of Africa, has resembled rivers, the sources of 
which are unknown and the waters of which are lost in the 



THE BEGINNING 6 

desert. We know little more about the American Indians 
or the islanders of Oceanica. Our science is small as yet, 
for it is young. In our own time it has created paleon- 
tology or the history of the earth, and comparative philology 
or the history of languages, races, and primitive ideas. 
Thus it has lifted one corner of the veil that conceals the 
creation of nature and the beginning of civilization. Hence, 
of the black and red races, the ancient masters of Africa, 
Oceanica, and the New World, there is nothing to inscribe 
in the book of history save their names. 

The Yellow Race, on the contrary, boasts the most ancient 
annals of the world, an original civilization, and empires 
which still exist. The Chinese and the Mongols are its 
best-known representatives. Attached to it are all the 
peoples of Indo-China and several among the most primitive 
populations of Hindustan. So, too, are the Thibetan, 
Turkish, and Tartar tribes, whose fixed or nomadic habita- 
tions extend from the west of China as far as the Caspian 
Sea; also the Huns, so terrible to Europe in the fifth cen- 
tury of our era, and probably the Hungarians or Magyars. 

The White Race : The Aryans and Semites. — The White 
Race, which has accomplished almost alone the work of civi- 
lization, is divided into two principal families : the Semites, 
in the southwest of Asia and Northern Africa; the Aryans 
or Indo-Europeans, in the rest of Western Asia and Europe. 
They appear to have had their cradle in the lands north- 
west of the Indus toward ancient Bactria, now the khanate 
of Balkh, in Turkestan. Thence powerful colonies set out 
which planted themselves at intervals from the banks of the 
Ganges to the uttermost parts of the West. The kinship 
of the Hindus, Medes, and Persians in the East; of the 
Pelasgi and Hellenes in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy ; of 
the Celts, Germans, and Slavs north of the Black Sea, the 
Balkans, and the Alps, has been proved by their idioms, by 
grammatical analogies, and by word-roots. Thus Greek 
and Latin are sister tongues, closely allied to Sanskrit, 
the sacred language of the Indian Brahmans. Celtic, Ger- 
manic, and Slavic languages or dialects show likewise that 
they are vigorous offshoots of this great stock. 

Before their separation these tribes had already domesti- 
cated the sheep, goat, pig, and goose, and had subdued the 
ox and horse to the yoke. They had begun to till the earth, 
to work certain metals, and to construct fixed dwellings. 



6 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST 

Marriage among them was a religious act. The family was 
the foundation of all public order. Associated families 
formed the tribe ; many tribes constituted the people, whose 
chief was the supreme judge during peace, and led the war- 
riors in battle. They had the vague consciousness of a First 
Cause, "of a God raised above other gods." But this doc- 
trine, too exalted for people in their infancy, was obscured 
and concealed by the deification of natural forces. 

As for the Semites, established between the Tigris, the 
Mediterranean, and the Eed Sea, they had, as far back as 
we can penetrate, one single system of languages, which 
leads us to attribute to them a single origin. Moreover, 
the Bible makes the Arabs, as well as the Jews, descend 
from Abraham. The Syrians and Phoenicians were of the 
same blood. Semitic colonies peopled Northern Africa 
as far as the Straits of Gibraltar. It was in the midst of 
this race, born in the desert where nature is simple and 
changeless, that in all its purity and splendor the dogma of 
one only God was to be preserved. 

Thus two great currents of white populations were 
formed, which, starting from the centre of Asia, flowed 
from east to west, over the western region of that conti- 
nent, the north of Africa, and the whole of Europe. 

Earliest Centres of Civilization. — These men of the ancient 
ages, the first-born of the world, continued for a long time 
savage and miserable before they constituted regular socie- 
ties. When, at last, they had found localities endowed 
with natural fertility, where the search for means of exist- 
ence did not absorb all the forces of the body and mind, 
association assumed regular forms. The elementary arts 
were invented, the first compacts made, and the great work 
of civilization was begun, which man will never complete, 
but which he will always carry farther. 

If we study the physical configuration of Asia, we shall 
readily understand why in that continent there were three 
centres of primitive civilization : China, India, and Assyria. 
Like waters which, held back for a time in elevated regions, 
flow toward lower levels and there form great streams, so 
men descend into the plain sheltered by mountains and ren- 
dered fertile by rivers. Such great natural basins, cradles, 
as it were, of flowers and fraits, prepared by the hand of 
God for infant races, were the valley of the Ganges, which 
the Himalayas surround with an impassable rampart, the 



THE BEGINNING 7 

plain of the Tigris and the Euphrates, which the mountains 
of Medig,, Ararat, Taurus, and Lebanon encompass, and the 
fertile regions of the Kiang or Blue Kiver and of the 
Hoang-Ho or Yellow Eiver, bounded on the west by 
the Yung-Ling and In-Chan mountains. Egypt offers 
another example of such civilization blossoming out upon 
the banks of a great stream in a fertile land. 

Primitive Books. — If from these general facts which his- 
tory has recovered we wish to ]3ass to more precise details, 
we must scrutinize the books which go far back in the series 
of the centuries, and which narrate, without hesitation, the 
creation of heaven and earth, and of man and animals, the 
formation of the oldest societies, and the invention of 
the first arts. But the examination and comparison of cos- 
mogonies, of religions, and primitive legends, make us 
recognize everywhere the creative power of popular imagina- 
tion in the youth of the world. We see man in the state 
of childhood, with the rashness of ignorance, applying his 
curiosity to nature in its entirety. As the laws of the phys- 
ical world were then hidden from him, we see him trying 
to understand everything by conjecture. We see him, still 
like the child in his effort to explain all, transforming into 
living persons the effects derived from the First Cause, 
while the Supreme Legislator remains hidden behind the 
multiplicity of phenomena resulting from his laws. Even 
in these venerable books, the exhaustive study of lan- 
guages, following the order of their historical develop- 
ment, has enabled us to discern the interpolations of 
various later epochs. Therefore it has been necessary, 
sometimes, to separate what has been brought together, to 
bring together what has been separated, and to give a new 
meaning to expressions, images, and ideas that had been 
wrongly understood. All the sacred books of ancient 
peoples have been subjected to these sure processes of 
modern science. This mighty work of philological re- 
search, dating almost from our own day, has already shed 
upon the relation of peoples and the formation of their 
beliefs a light which, though vacillating on many points, 
tlie preceding centuries could not even suspect. 



ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 2200-247. 



J 

II 

CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 

Great Antiquity of Chinese Civilization. — To all ancient 
peoples their antiquity is a title of honor. Thus the Chinese 
inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, or, as they still call it, 
the Middle Kingdom, claim for themselves eighty or a hun- 
dred thousand years of existence prior to their half -authentic 
history. Even that goes back to the thirty-fifth century be- 
fore Christ, and about ten centuries later becomes sufficiently 
positive to present connected annals. 

We know not when or how that strange society was formed, 
which for at least four thousand years has retained the same 
character. Its practical mind was wholly occupied with the 
earth, which it conquered by agriculture and by industry, 
and but little concerned with heaven, which it left empty 
and deserted. On one side of the Himalayas, man, cradled 
with half -closed eyes on the bosom of an over-fertile nature, 
was intoxicated by the enervating breath of the mighty 
magician, and dreamed of countless benevolent or terrible 
divinities, who enjoined upon him contempt for life, and 
annihilation in Brahma. But on the other side of the moun- 
tains, a laborious, patient, active race drew from life all 
that it could give, and replaced the formidable systems of 
the Hindu gods by a merely human. system of morality. 
The Emperor Chun, who reigned in the twenty-third cen- 
tury before our era, had already established for his people 
the five immutable rules, or the five duties of a father and 
his children, of a king and his subjects, of the aged and the 
young, of married persons, and of friends. At that time the 
empire was divided into provinces, departments, districts, 
and cities, with a great number of tributary peoples and 
vassal princes, who often revolted. 

Imperial Dynasties and Chinese Feudalism. — Until about 
the year 2200, the emperors were elected. Beginning with 
that period heredity was established, but with the corrective 
that the grandees could still select the most capable from 



B.C. 2200-247.] CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 9 

among the sons of the dead sovereign as his successor. The 
Emperor Yii began the Hia dynasty, which lasted four cen- 
turies, and ended as an abominable tyranny with frightful 
disorders. The founder of the second or Chang dynasty was 
a superior man, whose virtues were celebrated by Confucius. 
To appease the wrath of heaven during a famine, he made 
a public confession of his faults ; and afterwards, whenever 
a great calamity occurred, his successors followed his exam- 
ple. They and their people believed that heaven would 
certainly be moved by this voluntary expiation, and there 
was both grandeur and lofty morality in this belief. 

The last of the Chang resembled the last of the Hia. 
When one of his ministers remonstrated with him, he re- 
plied: "Thy discourse is that of a wise man. But it is 
said that the heart of a wise man is pierced with seven 
holes. I wish to make sure of it," and he ordered him to 
be disembowelled. Wou Wang, prince of Tchu, revolted 
against the tyrant, who was vanquished, and died like Sar- 
danapalus. He heaped together all his wealth in a palace, 
set fire, and flung himself into the flames (1122). Wou 
Wang reorganized the ancient Tribunal of History, whose 
members held oflice for life that they might be independent. 
The political wisdom of the Chinese was chiefly founded on 
respect for their ancestors and for the examples which these 
had left. Under this dynasty the feudal kingdoms in- 
creased to the number of one hundred and twenty -five, and 
China had a real feudal system, which favored its civiliza- 
tion. To this epoch must be referred the construction of 
an observatory, which still exists, as well as the sun-dial 
set up by the successor of Wou Wang. The Chinese were 
already acquainted with the compass and with the proj)er- 
ties of a right-angled triangle. 

The Great Wall and the Burning of the Books. Immense 
Extent of the Empire at the Beginning of our Era. — Never- 
theless, Chinese feudalism ended, like our own, by produ- 
cing a vast anarchy. The emperor was without power. 
One of his tributaries asserted his prerogative of offering 
the sacrifice to Heaven, and confined the last Tchu in a 
palace. A new dynasty, that of the Tsin, overthrew all 
the feudal lords, and restored the great empire, which took 
its name. Its most illustrious chief, Tsin-Chi-Hoang-Ti, 
accomplished this revolution (247 b.c). He opened roads, 
tunnelled mountains, and, in order to stop the incursions of 



10 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 247-a.d. 1203. 

the nomad Tartars, constructed the Great Wall, twenty-five 
kilometres long; but he has a deplorable celebrity for hav- 
ing burned books and persecuted men of letters. That 
everything might date from his reign, he wished to efface 
the past. Fortunately he could not destroy all the books 
or kill all the learned men. Chinese society was disturbed 
for the moment by this violent reformer, but soon returned 
to its traditional life. The Tsin dynasty did not last long. 
It was replaced by that of the Han, who ruled from 202 b.c. 
to 226 A.D. Under them the literati regained their influ- 
ence, and China attained the apogee of her power. Her 
armies penetrated even to the Caspian Sea, almost within 
sight of the frontier of the Eoman Empire; and on the 
shores of the Eastern Sea kings and peoples obeyed her. 

Invasion of the Mongols in the Thirteenth Century. — But 
the two empires which shared between them the greater 
part of the then known world, secretly undermined by the 
vices fostered by too great success, tottered and fell under 
the repeated shocks of invasion. From the steppes, extend- 
ing from the Great Wall to the Caspian Sea, hordes set out 
at different periods and hurled themselves, right and left, 
upon the two societies where civilization had accumulated 
the wealth which these barbarians coveted. The result, for 
China, was its first dismemberment in two kingdoms, sepa- 
rated by the Blue River ; and in both many obscure dynasties 
followed one another. The two were reunited in 618, but 
the new empire did not possess sufficient strength to resist 
the continual incursions of the Mongols. 

These nomads inhabited the same places whence, in the 
fourth century, had begun the invasion of the Huns which 
resulted in hurling barbarian Europe upon Roman Europe. 
They were always easily set in motion. Horses, herds, 
houses, all moved, or were readily carried, for the houses 
were only chariots or cabins placed on wheels and drawn 
by oxen. Such was the itinerant dwelling of the Tartar. 
He himself lived on horseback, remaining there, in case of 
need, day and night, awake or asleep. Meat packed between 
his saddle and the back of his horse, and milk curdled and 
dried, furnished his food. He feared neither fatigue nor 
privations, yielded to his chief a passive obedience, but was 
proud of his race and ambitious for his horde. 

Temudjin, the chieftain of one of these Mongolian hordes, 
united them all under his authority, in 1203. He took the 



A.D. 1203-1644.] CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 11 

name of Genghis Khan, or chief of chiefs, and promised 
this irresistible cavalry, ferocious and cunning as few people 
ever were, to lead them to the conquest of the world. He 
began by overwhelming the Tartars, his former masters, 
wrested from them northern China, which they had con- 
quered, and, leaving to his successors the task of subjugat- 
ing the provinces to the south of the Blue River and Corea, 
threw his armies upon Western Asia and Europe, where they 
marked their road across Persia, Russia, and Poland by 
bloody ruins. The hardy horsemen who had bathed their 
horses in the Eastern Ocean made them drink the waters 
of the Oder and the Morava at the foot of the Bohemian 
Mountains. Never had the sun shone upon such a wide 
dominion. It was necessarily brittle, yet the Russians were 
forced to endure it for two centuries, and were released from 
the Mongol yoke only by Ivan III., at the beginning of 
modern times. 

At the death of Genghis Khan (1227) his empire was 
divided into four states, — China, Turkestan, Persia, and 
Kaptchak, or southern Russia. His grandson, Kublai, who 
reigned over all China, Thibet, Pegu, and Cochin China, 
bore the title of grand khan, to which was attached an idea 
of superiority, so that, from Pekin to the banks of the 
Dnieper, everything seemed to obey him. But this suzer- 
ainty was not exercised long. Before the end of the* thir- 
teenth century, the separation between the four kingdoms 
was complete. 

First Europeans in China. — Kublai Khan, founder of the 
Yen dynasty (1279), adopted the customs of his new sub- 
jects, respected their traditions, encouraged letters and 
agriculture, but embraced Buddhism, a religion originating 
in India, and now claiming in China two hundred million 
adherents, or half the population. A Venetian, Marco Polo, 
lived seventeen years at his court, and we still possess the 
interesting account of his travels. A national revolution 
in 1368 expelled the foreigners, when the Chinese Ming 
dynasty replaced that of the Mongols. This family occu- 
pied the throne until 1644, or till long after the arrival of 
the first European colonists in China, since the Portuguese 
establishment at Macao dates from the year 1514. 

New Mongol Empire in Central Asia and India. — During 
this period are determined the destiny of the Ottoman 
Turks, a people originally from Turkestan, and hence re- 



12 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [a.d. 1453-18C0 

lated to the Mongols, and the career of Timur, surnamed 
Lenk, or the Lame, a descendant of Genghis Khan. The 
Turks took Constantinople in 1453. Timur, best known as 
Tamerlane, for the second time united the nomad Mongol- 
hordes. Between 1370 and 1405 this terrible rival of Attila 
conquered Turkestan, Persia, India, and Asia Minor, de- 
feated in the Kaptchak the Mongols of the Golden horde, 
though he did not destroy their kingdom, and at the famous 
battle of Angora vanquished the Turks, whose sultan he 
took prisoner. Gazing from one end of Asia to the other, 
Tamerlane saw no empire still standing except that of China. 
He was marching his innumerable hordes against it, when 
death at last arrested the tireless old man who lives in his- 
tory as the most terrible incarnation of the malignant spirit 
of conquest. His empire was divided, and disappeared with 
the exception of a magnificent fragment, the Empire of the 
Great Mogul, which arose in the peninsula of the Ganges, 
and which fell only at the close of the last century under 
the blows of the English. 

China in Modern Times. — In China the indigenous Ming 
dynasty reigned with honor, but, content with prosperity 
and peace, neglected the customs and institutions of war. 
Thus the Celestial Empire was once more invaded in 1644 
by western nomads, the Mantchu Tartars. The Tsin dy- 
nasty, which they founded, still reigns at P'ekin. Yet such 
was the resistant and absorbent force of this great Chinese 
society that, far from yielding to foreign influences, it has 
always conquered its conquerors. The Mantchu emperors 
made no change in its customs, and restored its fortune by 
giving it the boundaries which it possesses to-day. It was 
these princes who in 1840 waged with the English the opium 
war, which ended by the opening of five ports to foreign 
commerce, and who carried on with the English and French 
the war of 1860, which resulted in the victory of Palikao 
and the capture of Pekin. 

So the yellow race has made a great noise in the world. 
Through the Huns, it brought about the fall of the Roman 
Empire; through the Mongols of Genghis Khan, it raised, 
in the thirteenth century, the vastest dominion of the uni- 
verse ; through those of Tamerlane, it overthrew and crushed 
the population of twenty kingdoms ; through the Turks, it 
held Christianity in check for centuries ; through the Chi- 
nese, it has constituted a great society which, for fifty cen- 



B.C. 550-470.] CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 13 

turies and with imbroken continuity, has caused a large 
portion of the human race to enjoy the benefits of civilized 
life. 

Confucius and Chinese Society. — One man contributed, if 
not to establish, at least to maintain, the character which 
the Chinese constitution still preserves. This was Kung- 
fu-tsze, or Confucius. His books, serving as a gospel in 
the Middle Kingdom, must be learned by those who undergo 
the examinations required for obtaining literary rank and 
for admission to public functions. Confucius was not a 
legislator; he never had authority to publish laws, but he 
taught wisdom. "There is nothing so simple," he says, 
" as the moral code practised by our wise men of old ; it is 
summed up in the observance of the three fundamental laws 
which regulate the relations between the sovereign and his 
subjects, between father and children, and between husband 
and wife, and in the exercise of the five capital virtues. 
These are: humanity or universal charity toward all mem- 
bers of our own species without distinction; justice, which 
gives his due to each individual without partiality; con: 
formity to prescribed rites and established usages, so that 
those who make up society may live alike and share the 
same advantages as well as the same disadvantages; up- 
rightness, or that rectitude of mind and heart which causes 
one to seek the truth in everything, without deception of 
self or of others ; sincerity and good faith, or that frank- 
ness mingled with confidence, which excludes all pretence 
and disguise in conduct as well as in speech. These things 
are what have rendered our first teachers worthy of respect, 
and have immortalized their names after death. Let us 
take them for our models ; let us make every effort to imi- 
tate them." 

Elsewhere he sets forth the principles of religion and 
worship. "Heaven," he says, "is the universal principle, 
the fruitful source whence all things have flowed. Ances- 
tors who emerged therefrom have themselves been the source 
of succeeding generations. To give to Heaven proofs of 
one's gratitude is the first duty of man; to show himself 
grateful toward his ancestors is the second. For this reason 
Fou Hi established ceremonies in honor of Heaven and of 
ancestors." Thus religion and government rest upon filial 
piety. Heaven is honored as the author of beings, and the 
emperor, the son of Heaven, is the father of his nation. 



14 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST 

Thanks to the strength of this sentiment, China has been 
enabled to pass through the numerous revolutions which 
the succession of its twenty-two native or foreign dynasties 
have brought upon it, while no essential change has been 
wrought in the internal system of government, under which 
the welfare of 400,000,000 men has been developed. Thus 
the Chinese have the right to say to us: "We envy you 
nothing ; we enjoy all the useful arts ; we cultivate wheat, 
vegetables, fruits. In addition to cotton, silk, and hemp, 
a great number of roots and barks furnish us with tissues 
and stuffs. Like you we understand mining, carpentry, 
joinery, the manufacture of pottery, porcelain, and paper. 
We excel as dyers, stone-cutters, and wheelwrights. Our 
roads and canals furrow the whole empire. Suspension 
bridges, as daring and lighter than yours, span our rivers 
or unite the summits of mountains." They might add, 
"We have a literature which goes back more than four 
thousand years, and a moral code as good as many another. 
Our sciences need no aid from those of Europe to compete 
with some of yours. Earlier than you we were acquainted 
with the mariner's compass, gunpowder, and printing, those 
great discoveries of which you make such boast. Now, if 
we have reached this point without foreign assistance, it is 
because, fixing our eyes on the past, we have not made over 
our institutions with every generation. Despite the changes 
of individuals on the throne of Pekin, and modifications of 
our frontiers, we have, through the confusion of conquests 
and invasions, preserved our social order and respected the 
state, because we respect the family." 

In that country there are neither nobility to guide and 
govern the people, nor slaves to corrupt it. The emperor, 
in homage to labor, himself at certain seasons opens the 
furrow with a plough. Intellect has forced a recognition of 
its rights, since office is bestowed with regard to neither 
birth nor fortune, but on account only of learning. Never- 
theless, there we see the vice and misery to which immense 
agglomerations of men or long-continued prosperity gives 
rise. Falsehood works its way into the institutions, which 
it distorts. Since, so to speak, this people has neither relig- 
ion, nor philosophy, nor art, and is ignorant of an ideal, 
it has remained on that midway mental level whence the 
fall to a still lower plane is easy. Absorbed by its needs 
and pleasures, it has not undergone those painful birth- 



CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 15 

throes of ideas, on account of which other nations have 
suffered so much, but have gained thereby an imperishable 
name. China has given nothing to the world ; to the world 
she has been as though she existed not. 

Thus they have an airy architecture but no monuments. 
Their brick and wooden houses suggest the primitive tent. 
Their palaces are only piles of buildings constructed upon 
the tent type, sometimes not devoid of grace, but always 
devoid of grandeur. In painting and sculpture they imitate 
what they see, but they see the ugly and grotesque rather 
than the beautiful and true. Their imagination takes 
pleasure in strange forms, instead of idealizing natural 
forms. Their landscapes are without perspective and their 
paintings without moral life. Everywhere are vulgar scenes 
which represent neither a sentiment nor an idea, but only 
reveal the sensual appetites of this listless and yet active 
race. 



16 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1500-1000. 



Ill 
INDIA 

Contrast between India and China. — China and India 

adjoin each other. Nevertheless, between them intervenes 
more than the bulk of the Himalayas, "the Palace of 
Snow," as the Hindus call it. The two races are absolutely 
separate by natui-al character and disposition. On the one 
side a harsh, positive spirit, without horizon, has settled 
and prescribed the rules of a moral code ; on the other are 
a disordered imagination, a faith ardent but without works, 
a useless asceticism which kills the flesh, and unbridled 
passions which satiate it; in short, man lost in the bosom 
of nature, and aspiring only to lose himself in the bosom of 
divinity. On both sides, a regular, changeless machine is 
the idea of government. With the former, this machine is 
set in motion by the learned, Avho devote all their attention 
to the life of the body ; with the latter, it is set in motion 
by the priests, who issue their commands in the name of 
the gods. In the former case, any one can attain anything; 
in the latter, no one has the right or power to leave the caste 
in which he was born. 

Primitive Populations : the Aryans. The Vedas. — India, 
which consists of the two great valleys of the Indus and 
the Granges, Hindustan, and of a peninsula, the Deccan, was 
first peopled by a black race, of which the Gonds are the 
last remnants; then by the Turanian tribes, such as the 
Tamils and Telingas, a distant branch of the Mongolian race ; 
and lastly by men with brown and reddish skin, who appear 
to have been the base of population along the shores of the 
Indian Ocean, and with whom Herodotus was acquainted 
in Gedrosia, under the name of Ethiopians. It was the 
Aryans, however, who gave India its place in history. 
These Aryans formed part of a large group of white people 
permanently established in the valleys of the Hindu-koosh, 
the Indian Caucasus, possessing tlie same degree of civiliza- 
tion with similar languages, habits, and beliefs. When 



B.C. 1500-1000.] INDIA ' 17 

long centuries had crowded into this narrow place a too 
numerous population, had accentuated tribal differences, 
and aroused political and religious quarrels, then from this 
table-land, in four directions and at different epochs, streams 
of men poured forth who inundated half of Asia, India, and 
the whole of Europe. The Celts, Pelasgi, laones, or loni- 
ans, flowed toward Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and Gaul; 
the Iranians toward Media and Persia; the Germans and 
Slavs, from the Ural Mountains to the Ehine ; as for the 
Aryans, they turned to the southeast and crossed the Indus. 
They subjected the region of the Five Eivers, or Punjaub, 
after a prolonged struggle, the memory of which has been 
preserved in the Vedas, the first of their sacred books and 
among the most ancient monuments of our race. 

Fifteen centuries, perhaps, before Christ, the Aryans of 
the Punjaub conquered the fertile valley v/hich the Ganges 
overflows with periodical inundations like the Nile, and 
advanced as far as its mouths, which mingle with those of 
the Brahmapootra, a river equally mighty, whose source is 
found upon the northern slope of the Palace of Snow. 
Checked on the east by the mountains and the mass of 
Mongolian nations of Indo-China, the Aryans fell to fight- 
ing among themselves. The Mahabharata, the great Indian 
epic, still tells in 250,000 verses the story of the terrible 
war between the Kurus and the Pandavas, which ended 
only on the appearance of the hero Krishna, the incarna- 
tion of the god Vishnu. 

Delhi is the theatre of the principal events in the Maha- 
bharata, whose heroes do not quit the valley of the Ganges. 
This Indian Iliad presents singular affinities with the Greek 
Iliad, in certain parts surpasses the latter in beauty, and is, 
like it, the work of centuries. Together with the Vedas it 
throws light upon the origin of many beliefs and symbols 
spread among the ancient populations of Greece, Italy, and 
Northern Europe. The Eamatana, another epic poem, re- 
lates to the conquest by the Aryans of the peninsula of 
Hindustan and of the great island of Ceylon, whither Rama, 
" of the divine bow," carried the Vedic religion. This time 
a single author, Valmik, narrates in 48,000 verses the ex- 
ploits of the hero. The brilliancy and grandeur of his pict- 
ures and the touching grace of his poetry place him by the 
side of Virgil and Homer. 

History of India. — Unfortunately, this poetic and relig- 



18 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 509-a.d. 1498. 

ious race possesses no other history than that of its gods. 
The conquest by Darius of the countries on the right of the 
Indus gave Herodotus no information concerning the India 
of the Ganges. On the left bank Alexander found the two 
Porus and many kings and independent peoples. He wished 
to go to Patna, the capital of the great Prasian Empire, at 
the junction of the Jamna and the Ganges. A revolt among 
his soldiers stopped him on the banks of the Hyphases. 
An Indian of humble origin, named Tchandragoupta, ex- 
pelled the governors whom the Macedonian hero left in the 
Punjaub. He overthrew the empire of the Prasians, and 
received the ambassadors of Seleucus Nicator. The Greek 
kings of Bactriana held a part of the valley of the Indus, 
wliere we still find their medals. Later on, regular commer- 
cial relations were established between Egypt and the 
Indian peninsula, where Roman merchants founded count- 
ing-houses. Every year they carried thither more than 
four million dollars in cash to purchase silks, pearls, per- 
fumes, ivory, and spices. Thus, at the expense of the rest 
of the world, began that flow of precious metals to India 
whereby such enormous wealth has been accumulated in 
the hands of its princes. 

Such treasures tempted the Mussulmans of Persia. Early 
in the eleventh century, a Turkish chieftain, Mahmoud the 
Gaznevid, carried into the midst of those inoffensive popu- 
lations his iconoclastic rage, his cupidity, and his religion. 
The latter was adopted by a large number of the Hindus. 
The Turks were followed by the Mongols, whose chief 
reigned at Delhi until the last century under the name of 
Great Mogul. The discovery of the Caj^e of Good Hope 
and the arrival, in 1498, of Vasco da Gama at Calicut, 
placed India for the first time in direct relations with Europe. 
After the merchants of Lisbon came those of Amsterdam, 
France, and England. The English ended by seizing every- 
thing, and now reign from the Himalayas to Ceylon over 
200,000,000 subjects. 

The Castes : Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Sudras. — Thus, 
nearly ten centuries ago, this intelligent and gentle race 
lost its independence, but it preserved its social organiza- 
tion, religion, and literature. The great god Brahma, say 
the sacred books, divided the people into four castes : the 
Brahmans, or priests, who sprang from his head; the 
Kshatriyas, or warriors, who came from his arms; the Vai- 



B.C. 1200-900.] INDIA 19 

syas, or laborers and merchants, who issued from his belly 
and thighs; and the Sudras, or artisans, who came from his 
feet. The first three, or "the regenerated," who represent 
the Aryan conquerors, are the ruling castes. Marriage is 
prohibited between them and the lowest caste, which also 
includes the descendants of the aborigines, or the vanquished 
first inhabitants. The children born of forbidden unions, 
and all violators of religious laws are the parias or impure. 
They cannot inhabit the cities, bathe in the Ganges, or 
read the Yedas. To touch them occasions defilement. The 
Brahmans alone had the right to read and expound the 
Holy Scriptures or the revealed book. As all science and 
all wisdom were contained therein, they were both priests, 
physicians,* judges, and poets. Interpreters of the will of 
heaven, they reigned by virtue of religious terror. Thus 
they were able to surround the rajahs or kings, chosen 
from the warrior caste, with the thousand prescriptions 
of a ceremonial which the laws of Manu have preserved 
for us. 

Not without terrible struggles did the Kshatriyas submit 
to this sacerdotal supremacy. Legends have preserved the 
memory of their resistance. The final triumph of the 
priests does not appear to have been complete until after 
the ninth century before Christ. India then received the 
organization, which in its principal features it still retains, 
and which we find in the book of the laws of Manu. The 
last compilation of these laws, certainly prior to the Buddh- 
ist reform in the sixth century before Christ, carries back 
this religious, political, and civil code to a far distant 
antiquity. 

Political Organizations and Religion. — The laws of Manu 
remind one of the Pentateuch of Moses. They undertake 
to set forth as by divine revelation the origin of the world ; 
the institution of priests; certain precepts for the indi- 
vidual, the family, and the town ; 'the duties of the prince 
and of the castes ; the civil and military organization, and 
penal and religious laws. Everything is summed up in two 
rules : for society, the subordination of castes ; for the indi- 
vidual, physical and moral purity. The Vedic gods are 
preserved therein, but are subordinated to Brahmi, the 
being absolute and eternal, impersonal and sexless, whence, 
nevertheless, emanates Brahma, the active principle of the 
universe, which in turn produces Paramatma, the soul of 



20 AKCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 900-600. 

the world. He, uniting with Manas, or the intellectual 
principle, gives origin to all beings, who deviate less from 
Brahma, their supreme source, in proportion as they possess 
more wisdom. 

Thus heaven and earth, with all the powers and beings 
therein, are the product of a series of successive emana- 
tions. In this immense chain, each being has the rank 
which his intellectual or moral value has assigned him. 
Thus, below the absolute Being appears the Indian Tri- 
murti : Brahma, who creates the worlds ; Vishnu, who regu- 
lates them ; and Siva, who destroys in order to regenerate 
them; then the Devas or gods, symbolical representations 
of the forces of nature ; then man ; still lower, the inferior 
creatures, real or imaginary, such as the Nagas and the 
Raxasas, with changing forms. By means of learning and 
of^the rigorous observance of religious practices, especially 
by austerities which subdue the flesh, and ecstasy which 
annihilates personality and empties the individual soul into 
the soul of the world, man may equal the gods, command 
nature, and deserve at death annihilation in the bosom of 
Brahma. They whose asceticism and piety have not sufficed 
to secure such supernatural power and such annihilation in 
God are recompensed for their vulgar merits, after Yama, 
the god of death, has touched them, by entrance into the 
Svarga, and into the seven and twenty places of delight. 
The guilty are hurled into Naraka, which is divided into 
twenty-one parts, according to the diversity of tortures 
undergone there. 

But the effect of good, as of bad works, is worn out by 
time. Heaven and hell cast back into life the souls which 
they have received. These souls reenter existence in differ- 
ent conditions, which are always determined, nevertheless, 
by the law of rise and descent in the scale of being according 
to their merit and demerit. This is metempsychosis, a doc- 
trine which subjected to successive transmigrations all or- 
ganized nature from the plant up to man. At the time 
iixed for the completion of a cycle everything was engulfed 
in Brahma, but speedily another creation emerged from him, 
and a new cycle began. The soul of the righteous alone 
was exempt from these painful rebirths, since his perfec- 
tions had won for him the privilege of absorption into the 
eternal essence. This was the reward awaited by the priests 
who had traversed a series of previous existences in such a 



B.C. 600-530.] INDIA 21 

manner as to deserve a final rebirth in the superior caste, 
whence they were to pass into the bosom of Brahma. 

This original conception of the transmigration of the soul, 
at once profound and simple, forced a vast system of expia- 
tion and reward, wherein evil and misery were explained by 
sin, and good fortune and power by virtue. Unfortunately 
this doctrine rendered legitimate a hierarchy of beings. It 
ratified the unalterable distinction of castes, and the con- 
tempt of the high for the low. It confirmed the constitu- 
tion of a theocracy which, the better to defend its power, 
made purity consist, not in real virtue, but in the observance 
of innumerable rites, the performance of which the priest 
superintended and regulated. 

Buddhism. — This theocracy, the most powerful which 
the world has ever known, was shaken in the sixth century 
before our era by the preaching of Gautama, surnamed 
Buddha, or the Wise. His father was the rajah of a country 
near Nepaul. He was born in a royal palace, but at the 
age of twenty-nine abandoned his family, wealth, and rank 
to seek truth in the desert. Seven years later he returned 
from his wanderings. To mixed crowds, regardless of indi- 
vidual position or origin, he began to preach, but only by 
parables. He moved his hearers profoundly. This popular 
teaching was in itself a revolt against the Brahmans, who 
forbade teaching of doctrines to the Sudras. Although it 
was presented only as a reformation, the new doctrine went 
much farther. Gautama was destroying Brahmanism by 
substituting the equality of all men before the moral law 
for the principle of caste, and by substituting virtues which 
consist in the practice of the good, for the spurious virtues 
exacted by a ritual. The promises of salvation, of union 
with the divine essence, made to the Brahman alone, he 
replaced by the recognized capacity of all men by their 
merits to win Nirvana, or deliverance. In short, he broke 
up priestly heredity by calling to the priesthood the poor 
and the beggars who devoted themselves to a religious life. 

Buddha established for men six perfections : knowledge, 
which must, above all, apply itself to distinguishing be- 
tween the true and the false; energy, which makes us war 
against our chief enemies, the pleasures of sense; purity, 
which demonstrates victory; patience in enduring imaginary 
ills ; charity, the bond of society ; alms, the necessary con- 
sequence of charity. " I am come, " he said, " to give to the 



22 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 530-150. 

ignorant wisdom, and wisdom is knowledge, virtue, alms. 
The perfect man is nothing unless he comforts the afflicted 
and succors the miserable. My doctrine is a doctrine of 
pity. The prosperous find it difficult, and pride themselves 
on their birth ; but the way of salvation is open to all those 
who annihilate their passions as an elephant overturns a 
hut of reeds." 

These words, this so pure moral code, were astounding 
novelties. " This law of grace," opposed to a law of terror, 
made rapid progress among the lower castes, and even among 
the Kshatriyas, who had to endure the haughty domination 
of the Brahmans. Thus, despite the hatred of the priests 
against the reformer, Gautama was able to continue his 
apostolic work in peace until the age of eighty, without 
ever appealing to force, because he respected established 
order, and taught that men should render to princes that 
which was their due. When he died, his disciples collected 
his discourses, and convoked the first Buddhist council. 
Five hundred monks were present. After seven months of 
discussion they formulated their religious ceremonies and 
doctrine, which were stated with precision in a second 
council held in the fifth century, and in a third council 
about one hundred and fifty years before Christ. 

The ritual is extremely simple. The temple contains the 
image of Gautama, who is honored and respected as the 
wisest of men, but who receives no adoration. There are 
no sacrifices or superstitious practices ; at least there were 
none at the time when Buddhism had not yet been corrupted 
by the idolatrous traditions of the peoples among whom it 
spread and degenerated. In matter of dogma there was no 
separation from the ancient church. It even added to the 
Vedic divinities new but purer gods. It preserved the 
theory of rebirths, which, according to the Brahmanic doc- 
trine, were for the mass of the faithful only periodical returns 
to misery and despair; but it gave to all men the means of 
escaping from these evils by the individual's own merit 
without the providential intervention of the gods. 

The Western religions submit human personality during 
life to the action of Providence, and eternally preserve that 
personality after death by the resurrection of the body. In 
the pantheistic religions of the East, on the contrary, since 
all beings are of the same substance, they end by absorp- 
tion into the bosom of the absolute Being, which is the 



B.r.l50-A.D.800.] INDIA 23 

metaphysical bond of the universe. Buddhism did, it is 
true, recognize man's power to accomplish his own sal- 
vation; but the soul, for it, as for Brahmanism, was a 
temporary emanation from the infinite substance. Conse- 
quently, it solved the problem of the future life by the 
return of this particle of light to its home, by the absorp- 
tion of the part in the great Whole. 

The Hindu has at once less and more ambition than the 
Jew, the Mussulman, and the Christian. The latter hope 
to live again after death, and behold God face to face ; the 
former consents to lose all individual existence on condition 
of becoming God himself. 

We lay emphasis upon this moral history of India, be- 
cause, in the first place, its political history is not known ; 
and because, in the second, that country has been the main 
reservoir of philosophical and religious ideas, which, start- 
ing thence, have taken their course in different directions. 
The Brahmans, like the priests of Egypt, could well say to 
the Greeks: "You are children." Who would affirm that 
no echo of those great collisions of ideas of which India was 
the theatre, of those philosophical and religious controver- 
sies, of that peculiar organization of Buddhist churches 
which were animated by an ardent proselyting spirit, did 
not reach the commercial cities of the Asiatic coast, where 
Hellenic civilization had its awakening, and even as far as 
that great city of Alexandria whither the Ptolemies caused 
the books of the nations to be brought and translated? 

Against Buddhism the most terrible persecution finally 
arose. "Let the Buddhists be exterminated," cried the 
Brahmans, "from the bridge of Rama (Ceylon) to the snow- 
whitened Himalayas! Whoever spares the child or the old 
man, shall himself be put to death." Persecution was suc- 
cessful in India, which returned to the Brahmans; but 
Buddhism spread into Thibet, which is its stronghold 
to-day, and into Mongolia, China, Indo-China, and Ceylon. 
In those countries it still numbers multitudes of believers, 
very few of whom, it is true, know and practise the pure 
doctrine of Gautama. 

From this brief history it is evident that, if India has 
acted little, she has thought much. Let us add that the 
country is covered with imposing monuments of great ele- 
gance, of which we as yet are acquainted only with a small 
part. In thought, poetry, and art, India has developed 
three of the glories of Greece. 



24 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 5000. 



IV 

EGYPT 

First Inhabitants. — Herodotus said of a part of Egypt, 
"It is a gift of the Nile." The same might be said of the 
whole country, for without the periodical inundations of 
that river the desert would cover everything which was not 
hidden under the water. 

This country is certainly not the one where the first 
civilized society was formed. Nevertheless, its history, 
explicit as to a very great number of facts and persons, 
covers seventy centuries. Before the Persians conquered 
it (527 B.C.), it had already been ruled by twenty-six 
dynasties. The names and acts of many of its sovereigns 
are carved on the monuments with which they covered 
Egypt. To the fourth king of the first dynasty we may 
attribute the step pyramid of Saccara, whose worn and 
crumbling stones seem to support with difficulty the weight 
of the centuries accumulated upon its head. 

The first inhabitants of Egypt did not come from the 
south, descending the Nile, as was long supposed, but from 
the north, via the Isthmus of Suez. They belong to the 
race personified in Genesis under the name of Ham, and 
called by the Arabs " the Red " from the color of their com- 
plexion. This race appears to have formed, under the name 
of Cushites, the basis of the population all along the shore 
of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. 
These Cushites founded small states, which doubtless 
existed for long centuries before a powerful chief, Menes, 
subdued the whole valley from the sea to the cataracts of 
Syene, and founded, at least five thousand years before our 
era, the first royal race. To account for this unknown 
period and for the revolution in which it ended, it was said 
that at first the gods had reigned, then the demi-gods, that 
is, the priests, their representatives, and that the latter had 
been forced to yield their power to a warrior chieftain. 

First Dynasties (5000 years b.c). — 'Little is known of 
the first three dynasties, whose sway, eight centuries in 




Cop>righi, 1S3S, l,y T. Y. CtowM A Co 



n. Oli.i.an &Cq.. N. Y. 



B.C. 5000-2200.] EGYPT 25 

duration, reached the peninsula of Sinai, where on a rock 
the name of one of their princes has been found, who 
worked the copper mines in the peninsula. Under the 
fourth we behold all the marvels of a civilization then un- 
paralleled. Art then reached such development as the 
most brilliant periods will hardly surpass. What space of 
time must have elapsed between the day when the first man 
was cast naked upon the earth with the instincts of a wild 
animal, and that day six thousand years ago, which saw 
the admirable statue of Chephren come forth from the 
hands of an Egyptian Phidias, the pyramids of Gizeh rise, 
and a great monarchical society formed with a strong 
political and religious organization? The paintings or the 
inscriptions of temples and tombs recall to us its industry, 
its commerce, its agriculture, and all the bloom of its vigor- 
ous youth. So early did Egypt enjoy all the art and science 
which it ever possessed, and subsequent centuries found 
themselves able to teach it little. 

The most celebrated members of the sixth dynasty are a 
conqueror, Apapu, and a queen, Nitocris. Manetho calls 
the latter "the rosy-cheeked Beauty," and says that in order 
to avenge her brother, she invited the persons guilty of his 
murder to a banquet in a subterranean chamber, into which 
the waters of the Nile were suddenly admitted. 

From the sixth to the eleventh dynasty, monuments are 
rare, and consequently history is silent. Great calamities 
must have befallen the country during this period. When 
the light reappears, we find royalty banished to the The- 
baid, whence it emerged in triumph with the kings of the 
twelfth dynasty, who restored to Egypt its natural bounda- 
ries, and began the great struggle against the Ethiopians. 
One of the family constructed an artificial reservoir, cover- 
ing sixty -three square miles, and called Lake Moeris, to 
regulate the overflow on the left bank of the Nile. 

Invasion of the Hyksos or Shepherds (2200 b.c). — A 
horde of shepherds, without doubt crowded westward by 
some great movement of humanity in Assyria, penetrated 
into the valley of the Nile by the Isthmus of Suez and sub- 
jugated the Delta and Middle Egypt. Their kings, who 
formed the seventeenth or Hyksos dynasty, established 
themselves at Memphis, and fortified the town of Avaris or 
Plusium at the entrance of the Delta in order to prevent 
other nomads from following in their footsteps. Appar- 



26 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1750-1288. 

ently it was one of these kings whom Joseph served, as 
minister. After having reigned for live hundred years, the 
Hyksos were at last defeated by the kings of Thebes, and 
gradually forced back to the very walls of Pelusium. 
Ahmes I. succeeded in driving them thence, and the greater 
part of the nation quitted Egypt. Nevertheless to this day, 
in the vicinity of Lake Menzaleh, men of robust limbs and 
angular features are to be found, who may be descendants 
of the Shepherds. 

Prosperity of Egypt from the Eighteenth to the Thirteenth 
Century. — The expulsion of the Hyksos was followed by 
prosperity that lasted for more than five hundred years. 
Thanks to the protecting deserts and its strong political 
organization, Egypt again developed a brilliant civilization 
which the greatest men of Greece came to study. This epoch 
begins with the princes of the eighteenth dynasty (1703- 
1462): Ahmes the Liberator; Thothmes I., who commem- 
orated his victories by columns on the banks of the Euphrates 
and Nile ; the regent Hatasu, whose exploits the temple of 
Deir-el-Bahari at Thebes hands down; Thothmes III., the 
conqueror of western Asia and of the Soudan, " who set the 
frontiers of Egypt wherever he pleased," as says the author 
of a heroic song carved on a pillar in the Museum of Boulaq; 
Amenophis III., the Memnon of the Greeks, the King of 
the Speaking Statue, which at sunrise saluted Aurora, his 
divine mother. In the tomb of the mother of Ahmes a 
veritable treasure of precious stones of the rarest workman- 
ship has been found. 

This good fortune continued under the princes of the 
nineteenth dynasty (1462-1288), several of whom rendered 
the name Rameses glorious. Seti I., after having carried 
his arms as far as Armenia, built the pillared hall of Karnak, 
a masterpiece of Egyptian architecture. He even opened 
from the Nile to the Red Sea a canal, vestiges of which can 
still be discerned, and on the arid road to the gold mines of 
Gebel Atoky he dug a well, which must be called artesian, 
since the water spouted from it. His successor, Rameses II., 
is the Sesostris to whom the Greeks have ascribed all the 
conquests of those ancient kings. He was indeed a warlike 
prince. Columns found near Beirout, and a whole poem 
carved on a wall of Karnak, still attest his achievements. 
He was above all a great builder. He erected the two 
temples of Ipsamboul, the Ramesseum of Thebes, and the 



B.C. 1288-655.] EGYPT 27 

obelisks of Luxor, one of which, a granite monolith seventy- 
seven feet high, covered with inscriptions in his honor, is 
the central monument of the Place cle la Concorde in Paris. 
He compelled his captives to work on these monuments. 
The Israelites, scattered in great numbers over Lower 
Egypt, were treated as slaves. They were forced to labor 
in the quarries, to make bricks, and construct embankments 
to protect the cities from inundation. The oppression of 
their taskmasters fired the slaves with resolution. Under 
Meneptah the Hebrews departed from Egypt. The tomb of 
this Pharaoh is still to be seen in the valley of Bab-el-Moluk. 

Decline of Egypt. Invasion of the Ethiopians. — The 
twentieth dynasty (1288-1110) begins with a great king, 
E-ameses III., who represented on the magnificent temple 
of Medinet Abu at Thebes his exploits in Syria and the 
Soudan. After him came the decline. Egypt had become 
enfeebled in attempting to expand. Instead of remaining 
upon the banks of her sacred river, wherein was her 
strength, and in the midst of the deserts which gave her 
security, she sought to subdue Asia and the country of the 
Cushites and Libyans, and even the great island of Cyprus. 
She desired to control the sea. When indolent kings suc- 
ceeded the glorious Pharaohs, priestly intrigue seated the 
high priest of Amnion upon the throne of Thebes, while 
another dynasty, the twenty-first, reigned at Tanis in the 
Delta. Thus divided, Egypt submitted to the influence of 
neighboring peoples instead of imposing her own. Her 
kings assumed Assyrian names, gave princesses of their 
blood to Solomon's harem, and surrounded themselves with 
a Libyan guard, which portioned out the country among its 
chiefs. The Cushites or Ethiopians took advantage of these 
discords to seize Upper Egypt. Sabaco, their prince, even 
captured King Bocchoris and burned him alive. " The vile 
race of Cushites," as the twenty-fifth dynasty, reigned for 
fifty years over all the land of the Pharaohs (715-655). 
Among their kings are Sebichus or Sua, whom Uzziah 
invoked against Shalmaneser, and Tharaka, who helped 
Hezekiah against Sennacherib. According to Manetho, a 
revolution drove the third successor of Sabaco back to 
Ethiopia. The leaders of this movement were natives of 
Sais and founded the twenty-sixth dynasty. 

The Last Pharaohs. — Herodotus thus narrates the expul- 
sion of the Ethiopians : " The last of the Ethiopian kings 



28 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 700-a.d. 381. 

was terrified by a dream, and fled to his native states, leav- 
ing the government of the country to the priest Sethos. 
At his death the warriors seized the supreme power and 
intrusted it to twelve of their number. Psammeticus, one 
of the twelve, overthrew his colleagues by means of Carian 
and Ionian pirates. Realizing the military superiority of 
the G-reeks, he invited them in great numbers to the coun- 
try, and thereby angered the native army, part of which 
emigrated to Ethiopia. Aided by the newcomers, he tried 
to recover Syria, and for twenty-eight years besieged Azoth, 
which he finally captured." Necho, his successor, attempted 
to complete Seti's canal and unite the Red Sea and Mediter- 
ranean. He caused the Phoenicians to circumnavigate 
Africa, and defeated Josiah, king of Judah, at Mageddo. 
Master of Palestine, he pushed on to the Euphrates, but 
was defeated by the Babylonians and lost all his conquests. 
The second of his successors, Apries, likewise failed in his 
attempts against the Cyrenians. His soldiers, believing 
themselves betraj^ed, installed in his place Amasis, one of 
their own number, under whom Egypt emitted a final gleam 
of brilliancy. Twenty thousand cities are then said to have 
covered the borders of the Nile. This prince gave the city 
of Naucratis to the Greeks, and entered into close relations 
with the Median, Lydian, and Babylonian kings, who were 
themselves menaced by a fresh invasion of the barbarous 
Persian mountaineers. He could not avert their ruin, and 
beheld the successive fall of Astyages, Croesus, and Bal- 
thasar. The same fate awaited his own son, Psammeticus 
III., who, after a reign of six months, was overthrown by 
the Persian Cambyses (527). 

Egypt under the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the 
Arabs. — Since that day Egypt has never been independent, 
though often rebelling against the yoke of foreigners. An 
unruly province of Persia, she was conquered by Alexander, 
who founded the famous city which bears his name (331). 
The dynasty of the Ptolemies reigned gloriously for a cen- 
tury, and ingloriously twice as long. The Romans took 
their place after the death of Cleopatra (30 b.c). In 
381 A.D. an edict of Theodosius suppressed the religion of 
the Pharaohs. The temples were mutilated, the statues of 
the gods destroyed, and of one of the richest civilizations 
of the world nothing was left except the ruins, which at the 
present day we piously preserve. 



A.D. 640-1880.] EGYPT 29 

Egypt, thus violently forced into Christianity, remained 
nominally Christian for two centuries and a half without 
finding j)eace. The Arabs brought Islam (640). It took 
definite root, and under the Fatimite caliphs the land en- 
joyed a brief splendor. Cairo, a city which they founded, 
still contains the largest Mussulman school in the world. 
Thrice has France touched the land, always leaving glorious 
recollections of herself: in the thirteenth century with Saint 
Louis ; in the eighteenth with Bonaparte ; in the nineteenth 
with Frenchmen who conquered Egypt by their science and 
opened to the commerce of the globe the Isthmus of Suez, 
thus grandly realizing the dream of a Pharaoh who had been 
dead thirty-five centuries ! 

Egyptian Religion, Government, and Art. — Two religions 
existed side by side, the one held by the people and the 
other by the priests. The former was coarse and material. 
It regarded certain animals, the ichneumon, ibis, crocodile, 
hippopotamus, cat, bull, and many more, as divine beings. 
It was the old African fetichism, though elevated by theo- 
gonic ideas, as is shown by those gods with the head of a 
dog or falcon, and by the worship of the bull Apis, " en- 
gendered by a flash of lightning." The latter religion 
sought to account for the mysterious phenomena of nature, 
and explained the good and evil encountered everywhere by 
the opposition of two principles as Osiris, the representative 
of all beneficent influences, and Typhon, the god of night 
and of evil days. It even seems at first to have taught 
belief in one God without beginning or end. The care 
taken by the Egyptians to preserve the bodies of the dead 
proves that they hoped for a future life. The inscriptions 
even speak of numerous rebirths, which recall the metemp- 
sychosis of the Hindus. But this idea of the absolute and 
eternal Being was veiled from the eyes of the people and 
the priests by the conception of a divine trinity, — Osiris 
or the sun, the principle of all life. Is is or nature, and 
Horus, their divine child. After once abandoning pure 
monotheism, the Egyptians glided rapidly down the 
descent of polytheism. The representations on their 
monuments and in their religious rites of a host of 
secondary divinities made them forget the chief god, 
of whose attributes the others had at first been merely 
symbols. 

The government was a monarchy, all the stronger because 



30 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST I ; ^ ' 

its kings, according to common belief, were participants of 
divinity. All were " Sons of the Sun," and in that capacity 
were chiefs of religion as well as of society. 

Society had neither a sacerdotal nor aristocratic caste, 
nor a popular body which might form a counterpoise to 
the king. This state of affairs ended in the establishment 
of a certain number of classes, which were non-hereditary, 
but in which the son habitually remained in the father's 
state of life. Herodotus enumerated seven of these classes : 
priests, warriors, laborers, herdsmen, merchants, mariners, 
and, after Psammeticus, interpreters. There were, no 
doubt, many others. "Egypt," says Bossuet, "was the 
source of all good police regulation." We read in Diodorus 
that perjury was punished with death ; that he who did not 
succor a man engaged in combat with an assassin, suffered 
the same penalty ; that the slanderer was punished. Every 
Egyptian was obliged to deposit with a magistrate a docu- 
ment setting forth his means of livelihood, and a severe 
penalty discouraged false statements. The tongue of the 
spy, who betrayed state secrets to enemies, and both hands 
of counterfeiters, were cut off. In no case was accumulated 
interest allowed to exceed the capital; the property of the 
debtor, not his person, constituted the security for his debt. 
An Egyptian could borrow, giving his father's mummy as 
surety, and he who did not pay his debt was deprived of 
burial with his family. 

The Egyptians successfully cultivated many industrial 
arts, as well as mechanics, geometry, and astronomy. 
They invented hieroglyphic writing, whose characters, at 
first simple figurative representations of objects or symbols 
of certain ideas, were completed by phonetic signs, which 
like our letters and syllables stood only for sounds. In 
painting they employed vivid colors, which time has not 
effaced. Some of their finest statues might rival those of 
Greece, did not a certain stiffness indicate a conventional 
art wherein liberty was lacking; but their architecture is 
unrivalled in its grand impressiveness. In proof are the 
temples of Thebes; the hall of Karnak, where the vault 
is supported by 140 colossal columns, many of which are 
seventy feet high and eleven feet in diameter; and the 
pyramids, one of which, 481 feet in height, is the most 
tremendous pile of stone ever heaped up by man. Further 
demonstration is furnished by the obelisks, the rock tombs, 



EGYPT 31 

the labyrinth, the enormous Sphinx, which measures twenty- 
six feet from the chin to the crown of the head, the dikes, 
the highways, the canals to contain or guide the waters of 
the Nile, and Lake Moeris. No people in ancient times 
moved so much earth and granite. 



32 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1200-'o06. 



THE ASSYRIANS 

The Tigris and the Euphrates. Babylon and Nineveh. — 

Erom the mountain^ of Armenia descend two rivers, the 
Tigris and the Euphrates, whose sources lie near each other, 
and which, after uniting their waters, fall into the Persian 
Gulf. These two rivers embrace in their course a vast 
tract of country, mountainous on the north and flat and 
sandy in the centre and south, to which the general name 
of Mesopotamia is applied. Its first inhabitants were : in 
Chaldsea, or the southern part, those Cushites with whom 
we are already acquainted ; toward the mountains, Turanian 
tribes, which perhaps made the great Hyksos invasion 
along the banks of the Nile ; in the centre, Semitic peoples 
of a white race whose origin is unknown, but who are 
famous in history as the Assyrians, Hebrews, Arabs, and 
Phoenicians. 

In this country rose two splendid cities, Babylon on the 
Euphrates and Nineveh on the Tigris, each in turn the 
capital of the Assyrian Empire. Nothing in antiquity is 
so celebrated as Babylon, whose walls measured a circuit 
of twenty leagues, and rose three or four hundred feet high. 
The Chaldsean priests ascribed to it an antiquity of four 
hundred thousand years, but Genesis fixes its foundation 
within the historical period, where also it places the origin 
of the Hebrews. It ascribes the building of Babylon to 
Nimrod, the mighty hunter. His descendants reigned there 
until the time of the great Iranian migration, which bore 
one body of Aryans toward the Indus, and another to the 
middle of Persia. Those who took the latter direction 
arrived at Babylon, but did not rule there long, and Assyria 
reverted to her first masters. The Pharaohs of the eigh- 
teenth dynasty held her in subjection for more than two 
centuries, and Arab chiefs, as their vassals, reigned on the 
banks of the Euphrates. When the decline of Egypt began 
with the twentieth dynasty, the Assyrian princes freed 



B.C. 1200-606.] THE ASSYRIANS 33 

themselves, and became conquerors in turn. All the coun- 
try between the Euphrates and the Lebanon recognized their 
sway. On the east of the Tigris, Media became their vassal 
province. If we are to believe the Chaldsean priest Berosis, 
they penetrated to Bactriana and India. The monuments 
begin to give us certain information only with the ferocious 
Assurnazirpal and his son, Shalmaneser, whose war against 
the Hebrews and whose victory over Hosea, king of Israel, 
is recorded in the Bible. A successor of these princes had 
for his queen Semiramis, who was left at his death sole 
mistress of the empire. She enlarged Babylon, constructed 
quays and hanging gardens, and surrounded the city with 
a wall forty-two miles long and broad enough for six chariots 
to pass abreast on top. 

Sardanapalus was the last sovereign of the first Assyrian 
Empire. His excesses and effeminate life encouraged the 
Chaldaean Phul and the Median Arbaces to rebel. Not dis- 
couraged b}" four successive defeats, they succeeded finally 
in imprisoning the king in Nineveh. Rather than sur- 
render, Sardanapalus caused a funeral pyre to be prepared, 
and flung himself into it with his wives and treasures. 
Nineveh was destroyed (789). 

Second Assyrian Empire. — The Medes had regained their 
independence, and the Babylonians ruled over Assyria. 
His victory rendered Phul, their leader, sufficiently strong 
to resume the wars of the Ninevite kings against the nations 
west of the Euphrates, and to compel Menahem, king of 
Judah, to pay tribute. At his death, the Assyrians rebelled 
under Tiglathpileser, a descendant of their ancient kings, 
who conquered Babylon and set up a second Assyrian 
Empire (744 B.C.). The distant expeditions of this prince 
from Palestine to the Indus, the victory of Sargon at Kapha 
over the Ethiopian, Sabaco, the successes of Sennacherib, 
who rebuilt Nineveh (707), of Esarhaddon (681), who con- 
quered Egypt, and of a new Sardanapalus, who subdued 
Asia Minor, show the might of the new empire. But it 
fell, like the first, before a coalition of the Babylonians 
and Medes. Sarac, its last king, following the example of 
Sardanapalus, threw himself and his treasures upon a funeral 
pile, and the victors, entering Nineveh, utterly destroyed 
the detested city (606). Wiped from the face of the earth 
for twenty-four centuries, no one knew even the site of its 
famous temples, when suddenly it reappeaVed in the world. 



34 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 588-330. 

with its arts, its language, its customs, its civilization, all 
rescued from oblivion and attested by its numerous bas- 
reliefs and sculptures, which the Frenchman Botta dis- 
covered in 1844 at Mosoul, and which can now be wondered 
at in the Louvre. 

Last Assyrian Empire. Capture of Babylon by Cyrus. — 
Babylon replaced Nineveh. IsTebuchadnezzar, its king, won 
a glorious victory over the Egyptian Isecho at Circesium. 
He destroyed Jerusalem (588), took Tyre after a siege of 
thirteen years, traversed Egypt as a conqueror, and adorned 
Babylon with magnificent monuments. His four successors 
reigned shamefully. Cyrus, king of the Persians, besieged 
Babylon and entered it by the bed of the Euphrates, which 
he had diverted from its channel (538). Instead of destroy- 
ing the city, he made it one of his capitals. So did Alex- 
ander. The construction of Seleucia caused its abandonment 
by the Greek kings. To-day nothing is to be seen on the 
spot which it occupied except a heap of ruins, upon which 
the Arab rarely plants his tent, and which furnish a lair 
for the beasts of the desert. When the Parthians, and 
afterwards the Persians, raised the great Oriental Empire 
which the Romans were unable to overthrow, Ctesiphon 
was their royal residence. Each new sovereign authority 
gave birth to a new capital. Under the Arabian caliphs 
Bagdad was the queen of the Orient. It is still one of the 
great cities of the heir of the caliphs, the sultan of Con- 
stantinople. 

Government, Religion, and Arts of Assyria. — The king of 
Nineveh or of Babylon was the absolute master of the life 
and possessions of his subjects. Such is the law of oriental 
monarchies. At least, on the banks of the Tigris and the 
Euphrates, the king was not considered a deity, as on the 
banks of the Nile. Neither were there any castes, nor even 
a hierarchy of classes. Assyrian society was that sort of 
promiscuous mass which is not displeasing to despotism, 
because it permits the prince to raise or degrade whomso- 
ever he sees fit. 

At the base of the religion of these peoples, the idea of 
a single God can be descried; but there also this idea was 
concealed by a throng of secondary divinities, who are 
always the personification of some force of nature. In 
those immense plains of Chaldsea, where the horizon ex- 
tends so far, under that cloudless sky, and during those 



B.C. 900-588.] THE ASSYRIANS 35 

nights which the Orient makes so beautiful, because the 
stars shine there with a brilliancy unknown to us, the 
dominating worship was Sabianism, or the adoration of 
the stars. The sun, Baal, was the great god of the Assyr- 
ians, and in the celestial bodies they located spirits which 
exercised upon man and upon his destiny a powerful influ- 
ence. Thus their priests had a great reputation as astrono- 
mers. To them we owe the zodiac, the division of the 
circle into 360 degrees, and that of the degree into sixty 
minutes, the calculation of lunar eclipses, the so-called 
table of Pythagoras, and a system of measures, weights, 
and money which served nearly all the commerce of the 
ancient world, since it was employed by the Phoenicians 
and the ancient Greeks. To them also we owe astrology, 
whereby they developed a lucrative trade through the sale 
of talismans or consecrated signs, supposed to give their 
possessors magical powers. The common people found 
the objects of their adoration nearer at hand. They had 
fish gods, like Oannes and Derceto, or bird gods, like the 
doves which typified Semiramis. The worship of Mylitta, 
the goddess of generation and fecundity, gave rise to 
abominable disorders by sanctifying the grossest sensual 
appetites. 

The inhabitants, by their industry, their skilful agricul- 
ture, and their commerce, which two magnificent rivers 
favored, accumulated prodigious riches in this empire, so 
long the rival of the empire of the Pharaohs. The carpets 
of Babylon, its textile fabrics, its enamelled potteries, its 
amulets and canes, and its thousand objects of the gold- 
smith's art, were in great demand, even in the Koman 
Empire. The Assyrian sculptures reveal a degree of skill 
hardly suspected. Herodotus, visiting Egypt in the time 
of its full splendor, believed that the Greeks had derived 
their art and gods from the banks of the Nile. We now 
know that in the depths of Asia the origin of their religious 
ideas must be sought. Probably through Cilicia and Asia 
Minor Assyrian art reached the Greek Asiatic colonies, and 
from them awoke the genius of artists in the mother coun- 
try. More than one sculpture at Athens recalls forms on 
the monuments of Khorsabad. The figures of Selinus, and 
even in a certain degree the marbles of Egina, seem to have 
been touched by the Ninevites. 



36 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1500. 



VI 

THE PHCENICIANS 

Phoenician Cities between Lebanon and the Sea. — Be- 
tween the Euphrates and the western sea stretch the desert, 
which belonged to the Semitic nomads, and the Lebanon, 
the fertile valleys of which became the habitation of numer- 
ous Canaanitish tribes who originally occupied the shores 
of the Persian Gulf. The Phoenicians, near kinsmen of the 
Hebrews, the most famous of all these tribes, established 
themselves in the country of the Jordan, and on the farther 
side of the mountain chain on the narrow strip of coast 
which is bathed by the Mediterranean. The conquests of 
Joshua gave the valley of the Jordan to the Hebrews. 
Hemmed in between the mountains, whose venerable forests 
furnished the timber for the construction of ships, and the 
sea, which formed numerous harbors and invited to naviga- 
tion and commerce, the Phoenicians became skilful mariners, 
both from necessity and natural situation. Their shipe 
ploughed the Mediterranean. Population increased with 
general prosperity, and cities multiplied. Soon, both for 
the interests of commerce and to relieve the congestion of 
population, it became necessary to plant colonies at a dis- 
tance. The most widely known of Phoenician cities were 
Sidon, whose glassware and purple were celebrated; Tyre, 
which held the highest rank; Aradus, Byblos, and Berytus. 
We learn from Holy Writ what luxury and effeminacy and 
what an impure and often sanguinary religion reigned in 
Phoenicia. Mothers burned their children alive in honor 
of Baal-Moloch, and the utmost license was approved by 
their chief goddess, Astarte. 

Phoenician Commerce and Colonies. — But the Phoenicians 
offset their vices by industry and commerce, and above all 
by those colonies which so contributed to the expansion and 
progress of civilization. They established themselves in 
the ^gean islands long before the Greeks ; founded count- 
ing-houses in Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Sicily; and profited 



B.C. 1500-332.] THE PHOENICIANS " 37 

by the commerce of Arabia, India, and Ethiopia. In the 
fifth century they still possessed in Sicily the three cities 
of Motya, Seliniis and Panormus. In Gaul the traces of 
their settlement vanished early, but they covered the whole 
south of Spain, then so rich in silver mines, with their 
colonies. On the African coast rose Leptis, Adrumetum, 
Utica, and Carthage, the new Tyre, which became the most 
powerful maritime state of antiquity, and forced the neigh- 
boring Phoenician colonies to acknowledge its supremacy. 
While Carthage thus monopolized the commerce of the 
western Mediterranean, the Phoenicians of the mother 
country shared with the Greeks that of the eastern Mediter- 
ranean, and endeavored to form closer relations with the 
countries washed by the Indian Ocean. They forced the 
Jews to cede to them two ports on the Red Sea, Eliath and 
Eziongeber, whence their fleets sailed to seek ivory and 
gold dust in the land of Ophir, incense and spices in Arabia 
Felix, the most beautiful pearls then known in the Persian 
Gulf, and in India a thousand precious wares. For them 
numerous caravans traversed Babylonia, Arabia, Persia, 
Bactriana, and Thibet, whence they brought back the silk 
of China, which sold for its weight in gold, the furs of 
Tartary, and the precious stones of India. They added to 
this commerce the products of their national industry in 
glass, purple, and a thousand articles of attire. 

Conquerors of Phoenicia. — This prosperity of Phoenicia 
excited the cupidity of invaders. She was conquered by 
the Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty. The Assyrians 
many times appeared under the walls of Tyre, which was 
taken by Sennacherib, almost ruined by Nebuchadnezzar, 
and destroyed by Alexander. Phoenicia found herself al- 
most lost in the vast empires of the Persians, the Seleucidse, 
and the Romans; but, placed between two great centres of 
civilization, Egypt and Assyria, she took from them and 
carried to the West whatever they had best developed. She 
diffused something of the art, the industry, the science, of 
those two nations. Above all she took from Babylon a 
metric system, the necessary agent of commerce, and from 
Memphis the idea and form of alphabetical writing, which 
so many peoples have copied and modified, and which has 
been the indispensable instrument of intellectual progress. 



38 * ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1490. 



VII 

THE HEBRE"WS 

Ancient Traditions. — At the head of their race, the He- 
brews place Abraham, who came from Chaldaea, perhaps 
two thousand years before Christ, and settled in the land of 
Canaan ; Isaac, son of the patriarch ; and Jacob, the father 
of twelve sons, whose posterity formed the twelve tribes of 
Israel. The touching story is well known of Joseph, one 
of the twelve, whom his brethren sold to Egyptian mer- 
chants. By dint of wisdom and tact the Hebrew slave at- 
tained the highest honors, became the minister of a Pharaoh, 
and called to him his family, whom he established in the 
land of Goshen between the Nile and the Red Sea. 

In this fertile district the Hebrews multiplied without 
mixing with the Egyptians, who eventually looked upon 
this foreign race with distrust, and treated hem like the 
captives brought back by the Pharaohs from their distant 
conquests. They tried to compel them to abandon pastoral 
life and to shut themselves up in cities. They forced them 
to build the cities of Rameses, Pithon, and On; they made 
them work on the canals and on the constructions of every 
sort with which Egypt was being covered. The Israelite 
traditions assert that, in order to diminish their numbers, 
which increased in spite of every hardship, the Pharaohs 
commanded that all male infants should be killed at birth. 
An Israelitish woman of the tribe of Levi, after having 
hidden her child for three months, exposed it on the Nile 
in a basket of bulrushes at the spot where the daughter of 
Pharaoh was in the habit of bathing. The princess heard 
the cries of the infant and took pity on it. He was called 
Moses, or the " drawn out," because he had been drawn from 
the waters. He was reared by his adopted mother in the 
royal palace, and instructed in all the learning of the Egyp- 
tian priests. However, his own mother had revealed to 
him his origin, and one day he killed an Egyptian whom 
he saw beating a Hebrew. Forced to flight by this murder, 




a by Coll.,,,. oi,„:,i„m;u.. n. v. 



B.C. 1490.] THE HEBREWS 39 

he escaped to Jetliro, in the extreme south of Arabia Petraea, 
where he found again the ancient belief of his fathers, pure 
and simple manners, and the patriarchal life of Abraham 
and Jacob. He returned to Egypt, resolved to deliver his 
people "from the house of bondage," and led the Hebrews 
back to the desert with their herds. 

Religious and Civil Legislation. — They wandered long in 
the solitudes of Arabia, where the majesty of the one God 
everywhere is revealed. Mount Sinai was consecrated by 
the promulgation of the civil and religious lav/, and Moses 
tried to chain his people to the precious dogma of the one- 
ness of God by numerous ordinances which imparted to the 
Hebrew laws an incomparable superiority over every system 
of legislation. Instead of the distinction of castes, which 
moreover cannot be enforced in the desert, the Hebrews 
had the equality of citizens before God, before the law, 
and, in a certain measure, before fortune. In the sabbatical 
year, and at the jubilee which occurred, the one at the end 
of every seven years, the other at the end of forty-nine 
years, the slave was emancipated, debt was outlawed, and 
alienated property was restored to its former owner. The 
leaders of the Jews sprang from the people. If their priest- 
hood became hereditary, inasmuch as always restricted to 
the tribe of Levi, the priests possessed only the inheritance 
of poverty. In the ancient world society reposed on slavery, 
but the Jews had servants rather than slaves. Elsewhere 
the legislator disregarded the poor and repelled the stranger. 
Here the law distinguished in favor of the poor. It pro- 
hibited usury, enjoined alms, prescribed charity, even toward 
animals, and was kindly to the stranger. Thus everything 
which the ancient world degraded and rejected, the Mosaic 
law exalted. In this society, the stranger was no longer 
an enemy, the slave was still a man, and woman took her 
seat worthily beside the head of the family, enjoying the 
same respect. 

Moral Grandeur of Hebrew Legislation. — In the Deca- 
logue, or summary of the entire moral code, human and 
divine, in ten commandments, we read : " Thou shalt have 
none other gods before me." "Honor thy father and thy 
mother that thy days may be long." "Thou shalt not 
steal." " Thou shalt not kill." " Thou shalt not bear false 
witness against thy neighbor." "Thou shalt not covet thy 
neighbor's house . . . nor anything that is thy neighbor's." 



40 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1097. 

In the law we find these beautiful and touching precepts : 
"Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do ev-il." " Ye shall 
not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou afflict 
them in any wise, and they cry at all under me, I will 
surely hear their cry." " Thou shalt not oppress a stranger : 
for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers 
in the land of Egypt." "Six years thou shalt sow thy 
land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: but the seventh 
year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy 
people may eat : and what they leave the beasts of the field 
shall eat." "When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou 
shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field . . . neither* 
shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyards ; thou shalt 
leave them for the poor and stranger." " The wages of him 
that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the 
morning." "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
"Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honor the 
face of the old man." "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when 
he treadeth out the corn." "Thou shalt not seethe a kid 
in his mother's milk." 

Conquest of Palestine. The Judgfes. The Kings (1097 b.c). 
— Moses wished his people to return to the land which 
Abraham had chosen wherein to pitch his tent. Joshua, 
his successor, crossed the Jordan, destroyed Jericho, and 
divided the land of Canaan among the twelve tribes of 
Israel. 

At his death the political bond broke which held the tribes 
together, and the government of the elders was too feeble to 
complete the conquest of the country or to repulse the 
attacks of neighboring kings. Hence ensued periods of 
servitude, from which the Hebrews were rescued by strong 
and brave men, who after the victory remained their 
judges, thus erecting in the midst of this patriarchal re- 
public a sort of temporary monarchy. These heroes of 
Israel were Othniel; Ehud, who fought with both hands; 
Shamgar; the prophetess Deborah; Gideon, Avho scattered 
a whole army with three hundred men; Jephthah, who 
immolated his daughter in order to fulfil a rash vow; Sam- 
son, celebrated for his prodigious strength ; the high priest 
Eli, under whom the Philistines captured the Ark of the 
Covenant, wherein was kept the book of the law; and, 
lastly, Samuel, who, despite his wise and just administra- 
tion, was forced by the Hebrews to give them a king. 



B.C. 1019.] THE HEBREWS 41 

He chose Saul, a valiant man of the tribe of Benjamin, 
who seemed simple-minded and docile. He poured the holy 
oil of consecration on the head of the new prince, and de- 
posited in the Ark a book wherein he had written down 
the rights and duties of the kingly office (1097 b.c). At first 
Saul justified the prophet's choice by his moderation and 
victories. But rendered proud by success, he abandoned 
his rustic habits, surrounded himself by a body-guard of 
three thousand men, and shook off the yoke of the high 
priest. Samuel secretly anointed David, a Hebrew shep- 
herd, and introduced him into the ]3alace, that some day he 
might install him in the place of the unruly prince. The 
young shield-bearer of the king attracted the attention of 
all Israel by slaying the Philistine Goliath. Saul, consumed 
by jealousy, made several attempts to slay him with his. 
javelin. When he himself fell in 1058 in a battle against 
the Philistines, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and a 
few years later the other ten tribes, recognized David as 
king of Israel. 

For the time being no danger threatened from Egypt and 
Assyria. The little Hebrew state was able to develop and 
extend without encountering too formidable adversaries. 
Palestine, which had so often been the road of the con- 
querors, became a conqueror in her turn. The capture of 
Sion or Jerusalem, the destruction of the Philistines and 
the Moabites, numerous successes over all other neighbor- 
ing peoples, territorial extension of the kingdom as far as 
the Euphrates on the north and as far as the Red Sea on the 
south, set forth in David the victorious prince. His regu- 
lations for worship, for the public administration, for jus- 
tice, for the establishment of a numerous army, one-tenth 
of which was always under arms, and, lastly, tlie materials 
which he collected for the building of the temple, and the 
treaties of commerce concluded with Tyre, bear witness to 
his solicitude during peace. But a crime, the murder of 
Uriah, and the revolt of his son Absalom, saddened his last 
years. The Church still sings his sublime psalms. 

Solomon, a peaceful prince, fond of splendor and civiliza- 
tion, governed from the recesses of his palace like the other 
kings of the East. At his accession (1019) he consolidated 
his power by bloody acts, reduced the high priesthood to de- 
pendence upon the king, so as to emancipate the sovereign 
from all equal opposing authority, and built with magnifi- 



42 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 978-586. 

cence the temple at Jerusalem. He proved his wisdom 
by a famous decision, founded Palmyra in the heart of the 
desert, created a navy, and made alliances with Tyre and 
Egypt. His fame spread abroad, and the Queen of Sheba 
came to visit the great king of the East. But notwith- 
standing outward splendor, the provinces were being im- 
poverished, and Solomon himself destroyed the foundation 
of his power by introducing idolatry into his palace. The 
Idumseans and' Syrians revolted. His subjects rose in re- 
bellion because of the growing burdei] of taxation, and he 
died in the midst of public misery (978). 

The Schism and the Captivity. — His son, Eehoboam, re- 
fused to lessen the exactions of the royal treasury, and ten 
tribes seceded. Benjamin and Judah alone remained faith- 
ful to the house of David. From that time on there existed 
two nations, two kingdoms, Israel and Judah : Israel more 
populous, more extensive; Judah richer and more respected. 
Every year all Jews were bound to bring their offerings to 
the temple at Jerusalem. To prevent his new subjects from 
going to settle in the kingdom of Judah, which possessed 
the national sanctuary, Jeroboam erected two altars, one at 
Bethel and one at Dan. Hither his people came to sacrifice. 
This violation of the religious law prepared Israel for the 
introduction of idolatry, the establishment of which was 
also favored by the constant relations of its kings with the 
Syrians. Judah showed more respect to the Mosaic law. 
But there also idolatry made its way, and for its expulsion 
prophets were needed, fired by the double inspiration of 
religion and patriotism. Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Micah, 
Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, by turns threatened and roused 
the Jews from despair by the promise of a glorious future. 

The separation of the Hebrew people into two kingdoms 
ruined its power. After the schism it possessed only Pales- 
tine. Surrounded by enemies, the Hebrews engaged also in 
bloody civil wars, and after deplorable anarchy succumbed 
under the attacks of the Babylonians. The kingdom of 
Israel fell in 721, when King Hoshea, captured in Samaria, 
was carried by Sargon to Nineveh. Judah fell in 586, when 
Zedekiah, captured by Nebuchadnezzar, was dragged to 
Babylon, loaded with chains, and had his eyes put out after 
he had seen all his sons and the leaders of his people slain 
before his face. 

The Jews under the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. 



B.C. 60G-A.D. 10.] THE HEBREWS 43 

— The captivity, which dates from the first capture of 
Jerusalem (606 b.c.) lasted for seventy years, until tlie 
edict of Cyrus, who in ^oQ permitted the Hebrews to rebuild 
their Temple. Zerubbabel was accompanied by forty-two 
thousand Jews in his return to the ruins of the holy city. 
The work of construction, stopped under Cambyses through 
the jealousy of the Samaritans, was continued with ardor 
under Darius, who is, perha^DS, the Ahasuerus of Scripture. 
In 516 the Temple was finished. Under Artaxerxes Longi- 
manus, Esdras conducted to Jerusalem another great com- 
pany of Jews, and brought the people back to the faithful 
observance of the Mosaic commands. About the same time 
Nehemiah again raised the walls of the city of David. 
Thus the nation had recovered its law, its Temple, its 
capital, and all the energy of its religious patriotism. 
Unfortunately, many persons, whom Esdras and Nehemiah 
expelled for lawlessness, took refuge with the Samaritans, 
and built upon Mount Gerizim a temple to rival that at 
Jerusalem. Judaea was generally quiet under the Persians. 
After the siege of Tyre Alexander came to Jerusalem to 
offer sacrifice in the Temple, and exempted the country from 
taxation during the sabbatical year. After his death the 
Jews remained for nearly a century subject to the kings of 
Egypt. Ptolemy II. Philadelphus even placed their sacred 
books in the famous library of Alexandria, having caused 
them to be translated by learned men, Avhose work has re- 
mained famous as the Septuagint Version. Ptolemy Philo- 
pator persecuted them ; so they passed gladly, though with 
no greater security, under the rule of the kings of Syria. 
Seleucus IV. sent his minister, Heliodorus, to strip the 
Temple of its riches, and Antigonus IV. placed upon the 
very altar the statue of Jupiter Olympius. 

This attempt to install Greek polytheism in the sanctuary 
of the only God brought about a formidable insurrection. 
After being delivered by the heroic family of the Maccabees, 
the Jews endured the most cruel vicissitudes during two 
centuries, sometimes free under their own kings, sometimes 
subject to the Romans, often disturbed b}^ the quarrels of 
the Pharisees and Sadducees, the two rival political and 
religious sects. In the time of Augustus they formed, 
under the cruel Herod, a flourishing state, whose existence 
Rome respected for several years. Then it was that Jesus 
was born, and four years before the death of Tiberius began 



44 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [a.d. 70. 

to preach his holy doctrine. The Jews, who had become 
Koman subjects, revolted during the last days of Nero. 
Thirteen hundred thousand men perished in that supreme 
struggle for fatherland and religion. Jerusalem was re- 
duced to ruins, the Temple was destroyed, and the disper- 
sion began (70 a.d.). 

The Jews, a stiff-necked people, as their prophets de- 
clared, did nothing for art, science, or industry, but their 
moral laws were the most elevated and their religious doc- 
trine the purest the world has seen. At the cost of cruel 
sufferings they preserved the priceless doctrine of divine 
unity. Their ancient law, transformed by Jesus, has be- 
come the law of charity and fraternal love which should 
govern mankind. 



B.C. 1500.1 THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 45 



VIII 

THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 

Mazdeism. — We have seen that Bactriana and Sogdiana 
were the cradle of numerous white tribes which, under the 
name of Aryans, emigrated to the southeast toward the 
Indus, and under that of Iranians went toward Media and 
Persia. Perhaps a religious schism caused the separation 
of this great race. At all events, the Medes and Persians 
carried to their new country a doctrine which differed pro- 
foundly from that afterwards prevalent upon the banks of 
the Ganges. They recognized as their legislator Zoroaster, 
who seems to have lived fifteen centuries before Christ, and 
whose teachings are contained in the Avesta, or sacred book 
of the Persians. 

This doctrine, which is called Mazdeism, or universal 
knowledge, is the purest and mildest with which polytheis- 
tic antiquity was acquainted. Zervane Akerene, the first 
principle, eternal, infinite, immutable, immobile, created 
Ormazd, the lord of knowledge or wisdom, the source of 
light and of life like his emblem the sun, the author of all 
good, all justice, and Ahriman, his euemy, the principle of 
physical and moral evil. Each of them commands a hie- 
rarchy of celestial and infernal spirits who labor to extend 
the empire of their chief: the former by disseminating 
light, life, purity, happiness; the latter by multiplying 
malevolent animals and pernicious influences. But a day 
w^ill come when Ahriman, finally vanquished, will recog- 
nize his defeat, and reascend to Ormazd to enjoy with him 
a life of blessedness, together with all the wicked who have 
been enticed by him into evil and whom suffering shall 
have purified. Thus the goodness of Ormazd is eternal and 
boundless; the wickedness of Ahriman is limited to the 
time of ordeals, which prepare for and justify redemption. 
The compassion of God, therefore, exceeds his justice, and 
the hell of the Persians was only a purgatory. 

Man, created with a free and immortal soul, is the prize 



46 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1500. 

for which the two warring principles contend. As the 
devas of Ahriman ceaselessly urge him to evil, Zoroaster 
has given him the law of Ormazd to preserve him for the 
good. This law is humane and mild. It recognizes the 
rights of life while proclaiming those of heaven. It de- 
mands faith, but also works, as labor, alms, and moral and 
physical purity. It rejects barren asceticism and permits 
interest in earthly things, so that man, satisfying the legiti- 
mate demands of his nature without excess, has the greater 
merit in resisting natural temptations. "If a man eat," 
says the revealed book, " he will listen better to the sacred 
word; if he do not eat, he will have no strength for pure 
works." Work is a holy thing: "Plough and sow. He 
who soweth with purity fulhlleth the whole law. He who 
giveth good grain to the earth is as great as if he had offered 
ten thousand sacrifices." The believer must pay the same 
care to the earth which nourishes him and to the animals 
which serve him. Common affection results from com- 
munity of labor. Finally, marriage is a sacred bond, and 
numerous children are a blessing. 

Worship required prayers and an offering, consisting of 
animal's flesh, of the sap of certain plants, and of sacred 
cakes, which after the sacrifice are consumed by the priest 
and attendants. The sacred fire, the vase of elevation, the 
vestments of the celebrant, all the utensils of sacrifice, are 
provided for by the priests, who are the interpreters of the 
religious law, which they expound to the faithful. Prayer 
is frequent. There is a prayer for every act in life. 
Thereby the living are saved and the punishment of the 
dead diminished and their deliverance secured. Prayer 
must be made to Ormazd and to the celestial spirits, the 
izeds, who wage incessant war with the devas of Ahriman. 
One must "pray to the sun, the brilliant and vigorous 
courser which never dies," the sun which purifies the earth 
and the waters, and bestows abundance. "If it did not 
rise, the devas would destroy everything upon the earth, 
and there would be no celestial izeds." One must pray by 
day and also by night, for at night Ahriman keeps watch, 
and he is all-powerful. " Rise then at midnight, wash thy 
hands, fetch wood and feed the fire which must always shine 
as symbol of the presence of Ormazd at each hearth." 
Prayer is sometimes a confession, but made to God and not 
to man. " Before thee, Father ! I confess the sins which 



B.C. 800-595.] THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 47 

I have committed in thought, in word, and in action. God 
have pity on my body and on my soul, in tliis workl and in 
the next." 

Unfortunately, man too often ignores his creed to obey 
his passions. The followers of this joure doctrine have 
inflicted on the world as many evils as have done adherents 
of other religions. Nevertheless, they never seem to have 
become as brutal and depraved as the peoples who sought 
their gods in physical ideas of fecundity and generation, or 
in the phenomena of active and passive nature. 

We know nothing of the children of this race who re- 
mained on the banks of the Oxus in Sogdiana and Bactriana. 
Thanks to the narratives of the Greeks and the cuneiform 
inscriptions, we are better acquainted with the Medes. 
Through the Persians the connection was formed between 
Asia and Europe which since their wars with the Greeks 
has not been broken. 

The Medes. — Nevertheless, our details as to Media are 
very late. They begin only in the eighth century before 
our era, when Arbaces, who governed that country for the 
Assyrian kings, revolted successfully against Sardanapalus 
(789). From the long anarchy following their emancipa- 
tion, the Medes were rescued by Dejoces. He proclaimed 
himself king (710), built Ecbatana, and reigned fifty-three 
years in profound peace. His son, Phraortes (657), ren- 
dered the Persians tributary, but was slain by a king of 
Nineveh. Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, avenged him by 
attacking that city, which Avas rescued by an invasion of 
the Scythians. These barbarians ravaged Western Asia for 
twenty-eight years. The Median king rid himself of their 
chiefs by causing their throats to be cut at a banquet, over- 
threw Nineveh in 606, and subdued Asia Minor as far as the 
Halys. An eclipse of the sun, predicted by Thales, pre- 
vented a battle which he was on the point of engaging in 
with the Lydians (602). 

Under Astyages, his successor (595), this great dominion 
of the Medes crumbled away. This prince had given his 
daughter Mandana to a Persian chieftain, Cambyses, and 
from this marriage Cyrus was born. A dream caused 
Astyages, says Herodotus, to fear that his grandson would 
some day dethrone him, so he ordered Harpagus to put 
him to death. A herdsman saved the child and brought 
him up in secret. Later on, his grandson was acknowledged 



48 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 595-522. 

by Astyages. Angry with Harpagus, Astyages put Har- 
pagus' own son to death, and had a portion of the body 
served to the father at a banquet. Tlie courtier controlled 
himself, but waited for revenge. 

The Persians under Cyrus. Conquest of Western Asia. — 
The Persians, poor and warlike mountaineers, wished for 
independence. Cyrus, on reaching manhood, offered to be 
their chief, and led them against the Medes, whom Astyages 
had placed under the orders of Harpagus. The treachery 
of that general assured the defeat of his troops. In a 
second battle Astyages himself was taken prisoner, and the 
dominion of Asia passed from the Medes to the Persians 
(559). The conqueror, profiting by the ardor of his fol- 
lowers, overran the countries in the vicinity of the Caucasus, 
and attacked the Lydians, who ruled between the Halys and 
the ^gean Sea. Their king, Croesus, after defeat in the 
plains of Thymbria, shut himself in Sardis, where he was 
taken alive. Babylon fell eight years later (538). The 
Greek colonies in Asia Minor, together with Phoenicia and 
Palestine, were added to the new empire. The Scythians 
were devastating its northern provinces. Cyrus attacked 
them on the banks of the Araxus, gained one victory, but 
perished in a second battle (529). Nevertheless, the enemy 
were not strong enough to invade Persia in their turn, and 
Cambyses was able to continue in another direction the 
conquests of his father. 

The Persians under Cambyses and Darius. — Cambyses 
undertook to subdue Africa, beginning with Egypt, the last 
great monarchy which Cyrus had left standing. It fell in 
a single battle (527). The conqueror then wished to attack 
Carthage, but for such an expedition a fleet was necessary, 
which the Phoenicians refused to furnish. An army, sent 
against the oasis of Ammon, perished in the desert; another, 
led against the Ethiopians, suffered from famine, and re- 
turned in disgrace. Cambyses revenged himself for these 
reverses by cruelties of which the priests of Egypt and his 
own family were the victims. He put both his brother and 
sister to death. Eecalled to Asia by a revolution, he acci- 
dentally injured himself while mounting his horse, and died 
of the wound (522). 

The rebellion which had broken out was a reaction of the 
Medes against tlie Persians. A magian, Smerdis, passed 
himself off as the brother of Cambyses, whom he resembled, 



B.C. 522-509.] THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 49 

and was the principal conspirator. Seven Persian noble- 
men replied to this attempt by another conspiracy, stabbed 
the magian, and proclaimed as king one of their own num- 
ber, Darius, the son of Hystaspes. The usurpation of the 
magian had shaken the whole empire. A cuneiform inscrip- 
tion recently deciphered proves that Darius was obliged to 
put down successive rebellions in all the eastern provinces. 
Of all these insurrections we know in some detail only that 
of Babylon, which Herodotus has narrated. It is rendered 
famous by the self-sacrifice of Zo^Dyrus. He mutilated him- 
self to induce the Babylonians to admit him to their city 
as a victim who sought only revenge, but who afterward 
betrayed them (517). 

To assure the collection of the taxes and the support of 
his regular troops, Darius divided into twenty satrapies 
the immense country comprised between the Mediterranean, 
the Ked Sea, and the deserts of Africa, Arabia, and India. 
To occupy the warlike spirit of the Persians he resumed 
the expedition begun by Cyrus against the Scythians, but 
attacked them in Europe rather than in Asia. He crossed 
the Bosphorus, passed over the Danube on a bridge of 
boats which the Asiatic or Thracian Greeks had con- 
structed and guarded, and pushed on far in vain pursuit of 
the Scythians. As the time fixed for his returning to the 
Danube had elapsed, the Athenian, Miltiades, proposed to 
destroy the bridge, and thus leave the Persian army to 
perish. Histiseus, tyrant of Miletus, opposed this plan, 
representing to the chiefs, all of whom were tyrants of 
Greek cities, that they would be overthrown if they no 
longer had the support of the foreigner. Thus Darius 
was saved. On his return the king left 80,000 men to 
complete the conquest of Thrace and to undertake the con- 
quest of Macedon. He despatched two other expeditions 
to the extremities of the empire (509). The first subdued 
Barca in Cyrenaica, and the second overran other lands 
bathed on the west by the Indus. 

The Persian Empire was then at the apogee of its great- 
ness. Prom the Indus to the Mediterranean, from the 
Danube and Araxes to the Indian Ocean, all owned the 
sway of the great king, and he was about to throw a mill- 
ion men upon Greece. But the Greco-Persian wars will 
show what feebleness existed under this outward show of 
strength. 



50 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 509. 

Government. — The government was despotic, tempered, 
perhaps, in the case of the Medes, by the authority of the 
magi, but without other check in the Persian Empire than 
the exaggerated power of the satraps, whose number Darius 
had imprudently reduced to twenty. Moreover, the central 
power did not assume the responsibility of administration. 
Provided the provinces paid their taxes in money or kind 
and furnished the contingents exacted, they preserved their 
independence. The great Asiatic courts have always loved 
effeminacy and luxury. The Persians became corrupt, like 
their predecessors, in spite of the superiority of their relig- 
ion, which taught that life should be a continual struggle 
against evil. They erected few monum'ents. But the 
ancients vaunted the magnificence of Ecbatana, the seven- 
walled city, and modern travellers have been able to admire 
the imposing ruins of Persepolis, which the Arabs call 
Tchil-Minar, or the Forty Columns. 







CO <" z ff (1 O ' > '^- 



Ci, 








« c E^„j;g)^' 




HISTORY OF THE GREEKS 



»<Kc 



PRIMITIVE TIMES 



Ancient Peoples : the Pelasgi and Hellenei. — Greece is 
a very small country. It occupies the extremity of one of 
the three peninsulas which terminate Europe on the south. 
Its territory, inclusive of the islands, does not equal that 
of Portugal or of the State of Maine ; but its shores are so 
indented that its coast line exceeds that of the whole Span- 
ish peninsula. On the north it is attached to the prolonged 
mass of the eastern Alps, which form one of the walls of the 
Danube valley. On the south at three points it projects 
into the Mediterranean. The sea separates it on the west 
from Italy and on the east from Asia. 

As far as one can pierce the obscurity of those remote 
ages, apparently the first inhabitants of Greece were the 
Pelasgi and the laones, or lonians, members of the great 
Aryan race. 

The Pelasgi covered with their tribes Asia Minor, Greece, 
and Italy, and planted in those countries the first seeds of 
civilization. In their monuments they have left imperish- 
able proofs of their activity and power, but they themselves 
have disappeared, and no trustworthy tradition concerning 
them exists. At Mycenae, Tiryns, and Argos the remains 
of structures, called cyclopean and attributed to them, are 
still seen. 

By the unaided efforts of her aborigines Greece was 
emerging from a savage condition, when, according to tradi- 
tions now abandoned, but rendered lifelike by legend and 
poetry, colonies arrived from the more civilized countries 
of Asia and Africa, who brought with them knowledge of 
the useful arts and a purer religion. Thus the Egyptian 

51 



52 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 1200. 

Cecrops, disembarking in Attica, is said to have collected 
the inhabitants into twelve small towns, of which Athens 
became later on the capital, and to have taught them to 
cultivate the olive, to extract its oil, and to till the ground. 
To draw closer the bonds of this i\q\y society, he is said to 
have instituted the laws of marriage and the tribunal of 
the Areopagus, whose just decisions prevented injurious 
quarrels. 

What Cecrops did in Attica, Cadmus is reported to have 
done in Boeotia, whither he brought the Phoenician alpha- 
bet, and where he built the Cadmeiim around which Thebes 
sprang up. At Argos Danaus introduced some of the Egyp- 
tian arts. The Phrygian Pelops settled in Elis, whence his 
progeny spread over almost the whole peninsula, which, 
as the Peloponnesus, preserves his name. Though only 
legends, these traditions hand down the memory of the 
ancient relations between Greece and the opposite coasts. 

For Greece the most important event of this far-distant 
age was the invasion of the Hellenes. From the north of 
Greece, their first halting-place, they scattered all over the 
country, and effaced the Pelasgi by absorbing them. 

Heroic Times. The Trojan War. — The Hellenes were 
divided into four tribes : the lonians and Dorians, who at 
first remained in obscurity, and the iEolians and Achseans, 
who were prominent during the heroic period. History had 
not yet begun. Tradition was content with legends, which 
describe heroes travelling over Greece to deliver her from 
the scourge of brigands, oppressors, and ferocious beasts. 
They passed their lives in combating every form of evil, 
and received national gratitude and the title and honors of 
demi-gods, but were slaves to their own passions and abused 
their strength. Such men were Hercules and Theseus. Also 
popular songs celebrated the adventurous voyage of the 
Argonauts to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece; the 
exploits of the Seven Chiefs, who besieged Thebes, defiled 
by the crimes of Oedipus and the quarrels of the Epigoni, 
his sons; the wise Minos, and many other heroes of those 
fabulous days, whose tragic adventures poetry and art have 
consecrated. 

The Trojan War, which for the first time brought Greece 
into immediate conflict with Asia, is, if considered in its 
general features, a historic fact. Troy was the capital of 
a powerful kingdom in the northwest of Asia Minor and 



B.C. 1101.] PRIMITIVE TIMES 53 

the last relic of the Pelasgic power. The hostility of race 
was increased by a deadly injury. Paris, one of the sons 
of King Priam, was smitten by the beauty of Helen, wife 
of Menelans, king of Sparta, who had shown him hos- 
pitality. He carried her off, and thus enraged all Greece, 
which took the part of the outraged husband. An immense 
fleet, led by his brother, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, 
landed a numerous army on the shores of the Troad. No 
decisive engagement took place for ten years. Troy, de- 
fended by Hector, the son of Priam, seemed likely to main- 
tain a prolonged resistance, even after her chieftain had 
fallen under the blows of Achilles. The Greeks, then called 
the Achgeans, employed stratagem. Pretending to with- 
draw, they left behind as a,n offering to the gods a mam- 
moth wooden horse, which the Trojans carried inside their 
walls. The bravest of the Greeks were hidden in its flanks. 
Thus Troy fell. Hecuba, wife of Priam, and her daughters 
were carried into slavery. Priam was slain at the foot of 
the altar. Those of the Achsean princes who had not 
already fallen, like Patroclus, Ajax, and Achilles, set out 
for their own country. Some of them perished on the way. 
Some, like Ulysses, were long held back by contrary winds. 
Still others, like Agamemnon, found their throne and mar- 
riage-bed occupied by usurpers, whose victims they became. 
Many others, like Diomedes and Idomeneus, were forced to 
seek a new home in distant regions. The Iliad and the 
Odyssey relate with incomparable charm these old legends 
in Avhich the popular imagination delighted. 

The Dorian Invasion (1104 b.c). Greek Colonies and Insti- 
tutions. — The eighty years which followed the capture of 
Troy were filled with domestic quarrels, which overthrew 
the ancient royal families and caused the power to pass to 
new hands. The Dorians, led by the Heraclidse, or descend- 
ants of Hercules, invaded the Peloponnesus, surprised de- 
fenceless Laconia, drove the ^olians from Messenia and 
the Achaeans from Argos, took possession of Corinth and 
Megara, and later on marched against Athens, whither the 
fugitives had retreated. An oracle promised victory to that 
party whose king should perish first. Codrus, king of 
Athens, entered the hostile camp in disguise and caused him- 
self to 1)6 slain. Thereupon the Dorians immediately with- 
drew. On account of the troubled times many inhabitants 
emigrated. On the coast of Asia Minor at Smyrna, Phocsea, 



54 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 776. 

Ephesus, and Miletus, of Africa at Cyrene, of Sicily at 
Messina and Syracuse, and of Italy at Tarentum, Naples, 
and Sybaris, something like a new Greece was formed, which 
for a long time was richer and more beautiful than the 
mother country. In the Asiatic colonies, at the point of 
contact with Eastern society, was first established that 
civilization of which Athens afterward became the resplen- 
dent centre. 

Despite its dispersion on so many shores and its division 
into so many states, the great Hellenic family preserved its 
national unity. This was brought about by community of 
language and religion, by the renown of certain oracles, and 
of Delphi in particular, whither people flocked from all 
parts of the Greek world, and by general institutions such 
as the Amphyctionic Councils and the Public Games. At 
the most celebrated of the Amphyctionic Councils, convened 
at Thermopylae and Delphi, the deputies of a dozen peoples 
discussed common interests, and punished attacks upon the 
national religion or honor. The Olympian Games, where 
victory was passionately disputed, occurred every four 
years. They furnished the basis for chronology because, 
beginning with the year 776 e.g., the name of Corcebus, 
who won the prize of the stadium, was inscribed on the 
public register of the Elians, and it became customary to 
take the date of his victory as the starting-point in mark- 
ing events. 



B.C. 750.] CUSTOMS AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS 55 



II 

CUSTOMS AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS 

Spirit of Liberty in Customs and Institutions. — In that 
mountainous land, where nature renders life a struggle, and 
which the free waters surround, has always breathed the 
spirit of independence, even in its most ancient traditions. 

The kings were only military chieftains. When render- 
ing justice, they were aided by the old men. Their revenues 
were voluntary gifts and a larger share of the booty and of 
the sacrifices. There is no trace of that servile adoration 
which Eastern monarchs received. There was no separate 
clergy and no holy book like the Bible, the Vedas, or the 
Avesta. Consecrated doctrines were lacking, and imagina- 
tion was unrestrained. Every head of a family was the 
priest of his own home. 

The aristocracy did not form a caste. The nobles were 
the strongest, the most agile, the bravest. Because they 
possessed those qualities, they were considered sons of the 
gods. Between them and the people there existed no im- 
passable barrier, and no one lived idly on the renown of his 
ancestors. Each man made his own place, at first by force 
and later on by intelligence. What a distance from the 
East, with its absolute rule of deities or of kings and priests, 
their representatives ! Here man commands ! All must be 
movement, passion, boundless desires, audacious efforts. 
Prometheus has broken his chains and stolen fire from 
heaven in the form of life and thought! 

Below the nobles, who constituted the king's council and 
held the line of the war-chariots in battle, was the body of 
freemen who* in the middle of the public square, formed 
the assembly around the circle of polished stones where the 
leaders sat with the prince. Though they took as yet no 
part in the deliberations, they heard all important ques- 
tions discussed, and by their approving or hostile murmurs 
influenced the decision. Thus from most distant times 
Greece had the custom of public assemblies. The necessity 



56 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 750. 

of convincing before commanding stimnlated the mind of 
the peoi^le. The condition of the slave was mild. He was 
the famil}'- servant. When the aged herdsman Eumgens 
recognized his master's son, he kissed him on the brow and 
eyes, and the dying Alcestis offered her hand to her women 
as she bade them her last farewell. 

The family Avas better constituted than among any 
oriental nation, the Jews alone excepted. Polygamy was 
prohibited. If Greek women were still bought, more than 
one already possessed the severe dignitj^ of the Eoman 
matron. They exercised care over domestic affairs. The 
daughters of kings drew water at the fountain like the fair 
Nausicaa, and Andromache fed the horses of Hector. 

The Greek had no liking for tedious repasts or coarse 
pleasures or drunkenness. Immediately after a frugal meal 
he wished for games, exercise, dances, bards to chant the 
glory of the heroes. A stranger at his door was received 
without indiscreet curiosity, "for the guest is the mes- 
senger of Zeus." His wrath was terrible. On the field of 
battle he did not spare the fallen enemy. Still he might 
be appeased by gifts and entreaties, "those halting but 
tireless daughters of great Zeus, who follow after wrong to 
heal the wounds it has made, and who know how to touch 
the hearts of the valiant." Each warrior, feeling the need 
of friends, had a brother-in-arms, and self-sacrifice was the 
first law of those indissoluble friendships. Ten years after 
his return to Lacedsemon Menelaus still shut himself up in 
his palace to mourn for the friends whom he had lost under 
the walls of Troy. 

Later on two unpleasant traits were naturally developed 
in Greek character: venality, because the Greeks were poor 
and the East had gold in profusion; duplicity, because they 
were surrounded by barbarians and must resist force by 
cunning. 

We must furthermore remark that, though the amiable 
and charming qualities we have mentioned caused among 
this people many instances of individual greatness through 
courage, poetry, art, and thought, yet they did not result in 
the durable greatness of the nation. Political sagacity, 
which knows how to conciliate conflicting interests and found 
great states, was not included among the gifts which this 
privileged race received or acquired. 

Religion. — Their religion was, at first, only the natural- 



B.C. 750.] CUSTOMS AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS 57 

isin brought by theiii from Asia wliicli had been their 
cradle. At the side of the legends of the heroes and gods, 
we find the adoration of forests, mountains, winds, and 
rivers. Agamemnon invokes the latter as great divinities, 
and to one of them Achilles consecrated his hair. This 
nature worship outlived paganism. In modern Greece peo- 
ple may still be met who believe in spirits of the waters. 
Nature assumes imaginary and changing forms. When 
looked at through mental darkness, these speedily become, 
in the eyes of faith, realities which anthropomorphism seizes 
upon and converts into personal gods. Idealized physical 
forces seem to be spiritual beings, and these spiritual beings 
acquire a body. "God made man in his own image," says 
Genesis. The Greeks made their gods in the image of man. 
The conception is the same at bottom, and yet the difference 
is great, for the point of departure is, on the one hand, the 
infinite perfections of the Supreme Being, and on the other, 
the finiteness of humanity. Hence the scandals of Olympus, 
together with its grandeurs, and the unsavory history of 
those gods, who were subject to all human passions, wrath, 
hatred, violence, and even human woes. "Servitude," ex- 
claims a poet, "why, Demeter endured it! The smith of 
Leumos, and Poseidon, and Apollo of the silver bow, and 
Ares the terrible endured it also ! " In the combats before 
Troy many are wounded. " Their blood flows," says Homer, 
"but a blood that resembles dew, a sort of divine vapor." 

When the theodicy of later times had defined with preci- 
sion the functions of the immortals, those who counted the 
greatest number of worshippers were the twelve great gods 
of Olympus. Their chief, the enfeebled representative of 
the ancient idea of a Supreme Cause, was Zeus, who still 
shook the universe with his frown. But there were many 
other divinities, since Greek polytheism, by raising to 
divine rank the phenomena of nature, the passions of men, 
good things and evil, was led to multiply the gods inces- 
santly. 

These gods, not always respectable, were, nevertheless, 
considered the vigilant guardians of justice. The Furies, 
inexorable ministers of their vengeance, attached themselves 
to the guilty, whether living or dead. Their hair inter- 
woven with serpents, one hand armed with a scourge of 
vipers and the other brandishing a torch, they filled the 
soul with terror and the heart with torture. This deifica- 



58 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c.750. 

tion of remorse was all the more necessary as a moral sanc- 
tion because this religion was as uncertain of the future life 
as was ancient Judaism. No doubt punishment awaited 
the criminal in the infernal regions, and the just were re- 
warded, but how empty the rewards! In the Elysian 
Fields, amid groves of fruit and flowers in a perpetual 
summer the souls of the blessed continued to enjoy the 
pleasures which they had loved on earth. Minos still sat 
in judgment as in his island of Crete ; Nestor recounted his 
exploits; Tiresias uttered oracles, and Orion hunted the 
wild beasts which he had formerly slain on the mountains, 
all regretting their life the while. "Console me not for 
my death," said the shade of Achilles. "I would rather 
till the soil for some poor husbandman than reign here." 
Moreover this immortality is promised only to heroes. As 
for the masses, they can count only on the good and the ill 
of this present life which the gods deal out to them. There 
is a kinship between the members of the city as of the 
family. The sons will be punished or rewarded even unto 
the third generation for the faults and virtues of their 
fathers; peoples likewise for those of their kings, and kings 
for their peoples. Such is the blessing and the warning of 
Abraham ; a precious belief in default of a more energetic 
spring of action, and one which Hesiod sets forth in mag- 
nificent verses. 

The gods could be appeased by offerings and prayers. At 
the door of the temple stood the priest, sprinkling lustral 
water upon the hands and heads of the worshippers. The 
sacrifice, always celebrated in the open air, was a sacred 
banquet, a sort of religious communion between the god, 
the priests, and the devotees. In the centre of the temple 
rose the statue of the god, surrounded by the statues of 
deities or heroes whom he condescended to admit within his 
sanctuary. On the walls offerings and votive gifts were 
suspended in gratitude for some marvellous cure or unex- 
pected deliverance. Eelics of the heroes were preserved. 
At Olympia tlie shoulder of Pelops by contact healed cer- 
tain maladies. At Tegsea the bones of Orestes rendered 
that city victorious as long as it j^ossessed them. The 
statues of the gods exerted special influences; one cured 
colds, another the gout. The image of Hercules at Erythrse 
restored sight to a blind man. Often the images exuded 
perspiration, moved their arms and eyes, and rattled their 



B.C. 750.] CUSTOMS AKD HELIGIOS OF THE GREEKS 59 

weapons. At Aiidros, aiiniuilly on the festival of Bacchus, 
water was changed into wine. The temples possessed prop- 
erty which did not belong to the priests, and, like churches 
in the Middle Ages, many enjoyed the right of asylum. 
Private persons or cities could be excluded from the sacri- 
fices. Whole nations, placed under the ban of excommuni- 
cation, were exterminated, like the Albigenses in France. 

All x^jeoples have tried to wrest from the future its secrets. 
All have had sorcerers or magicians or augurs, like the 
Greeks who interpreted celestial signs, dreamers who beheld 
the invisible, or rhapsodists, like the Pythia of Delphi, who 
felt the god move within and gave forth his oracles. By a 
strange misconception the philosophers accepted this super- 
stition. "God," said Plato, "has bestowed divination upon 
man to supply his lack of intelligence," and the generals 
and politicians were obliged to reckon with it. However, 
let us note Hector's indignant protest against these pre- 
tended voices from on high, which may deceive. " The best 
of omens," said he, "is to defend one's country." 

If the Hellenic gods did not greatly influence the moral 
development of their worshippers, they did much for art 
and poetry, and they did not fetter philosophic thought. 
"You will die," was the apostrophe to them of Prometheus 
through the mouth of ^Eschylus in a century of faith, " and 
some day these nations will hear a voice crying, 'The gods 
are dead ! ' " 



60 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 830. 



Ill 
LYCURGUS AND SOLON 

Sparta before Lycurgus. — We know almost nothing con- 
cerning the liistory of Sparta during the two centuries 
which preceded Lycurgus. Only we see that the Spartans, 
few in number in the midst of a people who had not emi- 
grated at the time of conquest, were obliged to remain 
constantly under arms, like an army encamped in a hostile 
country. The Dorians concentrated around Sparta, and 
alone constituted the state, since they alone could be pres- 
ent at the assemblies where the laws were enacted, and alone 
held public office. They had two classes of subjects: in 
the open town the Laconians, who possessed civil rights ; in 
the country the Helots, or serfs attached to the soil, con- 
demned to plough and harvest for their masters. The 
Spartans composed the ruling race, and Avere all equal to 
one another. 

However, this equality gradually became disturbed, 
^^owerful families arose, while others lost their lands. 
Hence there was disorder within the city and weakness 
outside. One man attempted to stop this premature decline 
by restoring the ancient customs. This man was Lycurgus. 

Lycurgus : His Political Ideas. — The widow of his brother, 
King Polydectes, offered him her hand and the Spartan 
throne if he would put his nephew Charilaus to death. He 
refused, but the nobles, irritated by his wise administration 
during the minority of the young prince, forced him into 
exile. He travelled for a long time, studying the laws of 
other nations, and returned to Lacedsemon with Homer's 
poems after an absence of eighteen years. With her relig- 
ious authority the Pythia of Delphi supported the reforms 
which he proposed, and which the Spartans, weary of their 
dissensions, welcomed with favor. His laws maintained 
the relation already established between the dominant Spar- 
tans and the subject Laconians. They regulated the rights 
of the two kings, Sparta being a dual monarchy; of the 



B.C. 830.] LYCURGUS AND SOLON 61 

senate, composed of twenty-eight members of at least sixty 
years of age; of the general assembly, which could adopt 
or reject propositions presented by the senate and kings; 
and lastly of the Ephory, a body of magistrates appointed 
annually, perhaps instituted by Lycurgus, but whose great 
power dates from a later period. By hereditary right the 
two kings were the high priests of the nation, commanded 
the army, and were to enforce the decrees formulated by 
the senate and freely accepted by the popular assembly. 

Civil Laws. — His civil laws aimed at the establishment 
of equality among the citizens. To effect this, he divided 
the land into 39,000 plots, — 30,000 for the Laconians and 
9,000 for the Spartans. This division was attended with 
great difficulties, and led to a riot, in which Lycurgus was 
wounded; nevertheless, it succeeded. The 9,000 lots of the 
Spartans comprised the greaterpart of Laconia, and naturally 
included the most fertile lands, whose value the Helots were 
to increase. Forbidding the alienation to strangers of any 
of these lots, Lycurgus erected them into a sort of perma- 
nent military fiefs. War constantly diminished the number 
of the Spartans, so that they numbered only a thousand in 
the time of Aristotle. Consequently great wealth accumu- 
lated in the hands of a few families. The Laconians, on 
the contrary, could ally themselves with foreigners, so 
their number increased; but their possessions relatively 
decreased, and the time came when there was only a small 
number of rich people and below them a multitude of poor. 
Hence arose revolutions which disturbed the last days of 
Sparta. 

To maintain equality, Lycurgus prohibited luxury and 
the use of gold or silver money, and instituted public re- 
pasts, where the strictest frugality always reigned. At the 
same time, he forbade to the Spartans commerce, arts, or 
letters, and prescribed for all the citizens the same exer- 
cises, setting forth as the single aim of their whole life to 
provide and train robust defenders for the country. The 
same principle guided the education of the children, who 
belonged far more to the state than to their parents. The 
child born deformed was put to death. The rest, by means 
of violent exercises, which were imposed also on the girls, 
acquired strength and suppleness, and all were inspired 
with sentiments of respect for old age and the law, and of 
contempt for pain and death. 



62 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 743-594 

The Messenian Wars. — Delivered from dissensions by 
this rigorous legislation, Sparta completed the conquest of 
Laconia, and began that of the Peloponnesus. She first 
turned her arms against the Messenians, a Doric tribe settled 
west of the Taygetus mountains. There were two wars; 
the one lasted twenty years (743-723), the other seventeen 
(685-668). The hero of the first was the fierce Aristodemus, 
who immolated his daughter in obedience to an oracle, and 
killed himself, that he might not witness the humiliation of 
his people after the capture of Ithome, which he had de- 
fended for ten years. In the second, Aristomenes per- 
formed marvels. Not only did he vanquish the Spartans, 
but he made his way by night into their city and hung up 
a trophy in one of their temples. In vain did the poet 
Tyrt?eus stimulate the courage of the Lacedaemonians. 
Aristomenes, after being made prisoner, and cast alive into 
the deei^ pit called Ceadas, escaped, and recommenced his 
daring career. When betrayed by his ally, the king of the 
Arcadians, and defeated in a great battle, he retired to 
Mount Ira and there held oat for eleven years. At last 
he was forced to yield, but preferred exile to servitude. 
Many Messenians emigrated and founded Messina in Sicily. 
Those who remained in Messenia shared the fate of the 
Helots. 

This conquest was followed by wars against the cities of 
Tegea and Argos, but neither was completely subdued. 
The Spartans, in the sixth century before our era, were 
considered the leading people of Greece, and were in fact 
the most formidable. 

Athens until the Time of Solon. The Archonship. — After 
the death of Codrus, Athens abolished the monarchy and 
appointed archons. Their office until 752 was for life, then 
for ten years, after 683 for only one year, and finally was 
shared by nine magistrates. This divided authority could 
not check the excesses of the aristocracy or the projects of 
the ambitious. The stern code of Draco, which punished 
every offence with death, was rejected, and troubles con- 
tinued. 

Solon. — In 594 the task of reforming the laws and the 
constitution was intrusted to Solon, then famous for his 
poetry. He began by making the payment of debt easier, 
and by releasing all debtors, but he refused to allow the 
partition of land which the poor demanded. His aim was 



B.C. 594-514.] LTCUKGUS AND SOLON (33 

to abolish an oppressive aristocracy, without, however, estab- 
lishing what would be called to-day a radical democracy. 
He divided the people into four classes, according to prop- 
erty. To belong to the first class, one must possess an 
income of 500 medimni, about eighty-live dollars; for the 
second class, 400; for the third, 300. Those who had a 
smaller income were the fourth class, or Thetes. Only 
members of the first three classes were eligible to public 
office, but all might attend the public assemblies and sit in 
the tribunals. The nine archons, the supreme magistrates 
of the state, could not discharge military duties. The 
senate consisted of 400 members, chosen by lot from the 
first three classes, and subjected to severe tests. Every 
proposition, made to the public assembly, must be first dis- 
cussed by it. The people confirmed the laws, nominated 
to office, deliberated on state affairs, and filled the courts 
in order to try great lawsuits. The Areopagus, composed 
of former archons, was the supreme tribunal for capital 
causes. It superintended morals and magistrates, and 
could even annul the decisions of the people. Thus this 
constitution was a clever mixture of aristocracy and de- 
mocracy, where the management of public affairs was re- 
served to the enlightened citizens. In his civil laws Solon 
encouraged labor, and never, like Lycurgus, sacrificed the 
man to the citizen, or the moral code to politics. 

The Pisistratidae. Clisthenes. Themistocles. — After pro- 
mulgating his laws, the Athenian legislator departed to 
consult the wisdom of the ancient Eastern nations. AVhen 
he returned in 565, he found that Athens had given itself a 
master. The parties, which he had thought to stifle, had 
reappeared. From these fresh struggles had sprung the 
tyranny of Pisistratus, who, without abolishing the consti- 
tution, managed, as the favorite of the people and the 
leader of the democracy, to exercise in the city an influ- 
ence which annulled that of the magistrates. His mild 
tyranny, however, was friendly to letters and arts. In 560, 
by pretending that an attempt had been made upon his life, 
he succeeded in having guards appointed for his protection. 
Twice exiled, he was twice recalled, and retained power 
until his death. He had honored, if not legitimized, his 
usurpation by a skilful and prosperous administration. 

His two sons, Hipparchus and Hippias, succeeded (528), 
and governed together; but when Hipparchus fell, in 514, 



64 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 514-500. 

under the dagger of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Hippias 
became a cruel tyrant. The powerful family of the Alc- 
meonidse, who had fled from Athens, thought the occasion 
favorable to overthrow the last of the Pisistratidse. They 
bribed the Pythia of Delphi, who induced the Spartans to 
support them. Aided by a Dorian army, they did in fact 
return to Athens, and compel Hippias to flee to the Persians 
(510). The city, thus delivered, fell at once into intestine 
quarrels. Clisthenes and Isagoras, leaders of the people 
and of the aristocrats, banished each other in turn. The 
former finally carried the day, in spite of the succor fur- 
nished his rival by the Spartans. To reward the people who 
had supported him, he made the constitution more demo- 
cratic, and established ostracism, a custom which consisted 
in exiling, as dangerous to the city, any citizen whose name 
was inscribed on at least 6000 voting shells. Athens, the 
mistress of Euboea, the Thracian Chersonese, and the island 
of Lemnos, which Miltiades had conquered, was already a 
maritime power. To increase her strength, Themistocles 
built 200 vessels with the income of the silver mines of 
Larium. This fleet was destined to save Athens ^nd Greece. 



B.C. 500-490.] THE PERSIAN WARS 65 



IV 

THE PERSIAN WARS 

Revolt of the Asiatic Greeks from the Persians (500). — 

Darius had undertaken his expedition against the Scythians, 
and had conquered Thrace, without the Greeks paying any 
heed to this formidable aggressor, who must inevitably be 
tempted to lay his hand upon their country also. The 
Asiatic Greeks, who were subject to Persia, struck a blow 
for liberty. Miletus, a colony of Athens, was the centre of 
the movement. It asked of the mother city the aid which 
Sparta had refused to give. Athens furnished vessels and 
a body of troops, which contributed to the capture and burn- 
ing of Sardis. A defeat, sustained in their return from this 
expedition, disgusted the Athenians with the war, the bur- 
den of which then 'fell upon the lonians, who were crushed 
in a naval battle. After Miletus was taken, and all the 
Greek cities of Asia were again subdued, a Persian army 
commanded by Mardonius crossed to Europe to chastise the 
allies of the rebels. The Persian fleet was destroyed by a 
tempest near Mount Athos, and the Thracians inflicted heavy 
losses upon the land forces, so Mardonius returned to Asia. 
First Persian War. Marathon and Miltiades (490). — A 
second expedition, under the command of Datis and Arta- 
phernes, guided by the tyrant Hippias, set out by sea through 
the Cyclades, which it subdued, and disembarked 100,000 
Persians at Marathon. There 10,000 Athenians and 1000 
Platseans, under the command of Miltiades, by their heroic 
courage saved not only their country, but the liberty and the 
civilization of the world. Hippias fell upon the field of 
battle. The Persian fleet, after a vain attempt to surprise 
Athens, sailed away in shame to Asia. Miltiades, the hero 
of that grand day, was commissioned to subdue the Cyclades, 
but he failed before Paros. Being accused of treason, he 
was condemned to a fine, which he could not pay, and died 
in prison of his wounds. Then Themistocles became the 
most influential man at Athens. He realized that the Per- 



66 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 480-479. 

sians would renew their attempt. Taking advantage of an 
insurrection in Egypt, which forced Darius to postpone his 
revenge, he devoted all the resources of Athens to increas- 
ing the fleet. 

Second Persian War. Salamis (480). — Xerxes succeeded 
Darius. After he had reduced Egypt once more to submis- 
sion, he agitated his immense empire to make a resistless 
invasion of Greece with a million men and more than 1200 
ships. On arriving from Susa at Abydos he threw a bridge 
across the Dardanelles. To punish Athos, as he said, he 
had a canal dug, which relieved his fleet of the necessity of 
sailing round that dangerous promontory. Thrace, Mace- 
don, and Thessaly were deluged with troops, and submitted. 
He encountered resistance only at the Pass of Thermopylae. 
King Leonidas, who held it with 300 Spartans and a few 
Thespians, thwarted all his efforts, but a traitor showed the 
Persians a path by which they could outflank the heroic 
band. They still refused to retreat, and in the very camp 
of Xerxes sought a glorions death. After Thermopylae had 
been forced, the Greek fleet could no longer remain off 
Artemisium, at the north of Euboea, where it had anchored 
at first. It withdrew to Salamis, leaving Attica and cen- 
tral Greece defenceless. Xerxes entered Athens, which he 
burned. He believed the war was finished, but all Athens 
was on board her ships. Themistocles employed a stratagem 
to keep the Greeks together at a favorable point, and ex- 
cited Xerxes to end all by a naval battle. From the throne 
erected for him on the shore the great king beheld the de- 
feat and destruction of his fleet at the battle of Salamis. 
Six months after crossing the Hellespont as a conqueror, 
he repassed it as a fugitive. 

Platsea (479). — ^He had, liowever, left Mardonius in 
Greece with 300,000 men. A hundred thousand Greeks 
collected at Platsea under the orders of Pausanias, king of 
Sparta. Of the barbarian host only a detachment escaped, 
which had retreated before the battle. On the same day the 
Greek fleet won a complete victory at Mycale on the Asiatic 
coast. Thus the European continent was purged from the 
barbarians, and the sea was free. Athens launched out 
upon it. 

Continuance of the War by Athens. — To Athens belongs 
the chief honor in resisting the Persian invasion. Alone 
she had conquered at Marathon with Miltiades. At Salamis 



B.C. 470 448.] THE PERSIAN WARS 67 

her Themistocles had again assured the victory by forcing 
the allies to conquer in spite of themselves. The glory of 
Mycale belonged almost wholly to her, and she had shared 
that of Platsea. Sparta could cite only the immortal but 
futile self-sacrifice of Leonidas. The treachery of King 
Pausanias, whom the ephors had sent to Thrace to expel 
the Persian garrisons, and who treated secretly with Xerxes, 
completely disgusted Lacedeemon with this war. Athens, 
thus left alone at the head of the allies, boldly accepted the 
role of antagonist to the great king. She herself assumed 
the offensive. Soon, asking vessels and money from her 
allies instead of soldiers, she continued the struggle in the 
name of Greece, but on her own account and for her own 
advantage. She subdued Amphipolis and a part of Thrace, 
whither she sent 10,000 colonists, and undertook to free the 
Asiatic Greeks. Cimon in one day gained two victories, one 
by land and one by sea, near the banks of the Eurymedon 
(466). Thereby he secured for Athens the empire of the 
seas, and, taking possession of the Thracian Chersonese, he 
wrested from the Persians the key to Europe. 

Last Victories of the Greeks. Cimon. — Artaxerxes Lon- 
gimanus ascended the throne in 465, and beheld the shame 
of his empire still further increased. Another rebellion in 
Egypt threatened the Persian monarchy with dismember- 
ment. The Athenians hastened to aid the rebels, who held 
out for seven years. The banishment of Cimon, who was 
ostracized, and the rivalry of Sparta and Athens, which led 
to the first war between the two republics and their allies, 
gave a little respite to the Persians. But Cimon was re- 
called, and reconciled Athens and Sparta. Immediately he 
began hostilities against the common enemy. One victory 
near Cyprus, and another on the coast of Asia, gloriously 
terminated both his military career and the Persian wars. 
The great king, threatened even in his own dominions, 
signed a humiliating treaty, which restored liberty to the 
Asiatic Greeks (448). His fleet was prohibited from enter- 
ing the ^gean Sea, and his armies from approaching within 
three days' march of its coasts. Cimon died in his triumph. 



68 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [3.0.460-430 



THE AGE OF PERICLES 

The Athenian People. — During this struggle Athens had 
been admirably served by the great men who had succeeded 
each other as her generals or statesmen : Miltiades, the hero 
of Marathon; Themistocles, who so often mingled craft 
with courage ; Aristides, more upright, more just, benefiting 
Athens by his virtues equally with his valor ; and thus inspir- 
ing the allies with sufficient confidence to trust to him their 
vessels and treasures, a man who, after having administered 
the most opulent treasury in Europe, died without leaving 
enough property to defray his funeral expenses, and be- 
queathed to the state the duty of paying them and of dower- 
ing his daughter ; Cimon, son of Miltiades, greater than his 
father, a hero whose single passion was to unite the Greek 
cities in fraternal bonds, and pursue the Persians to the 
death, and avenge the burning of Athens and of her temples. 
With these illustrious leaders we must associate the Athe- 
nian people, a populace often fickle, thankless, and violent, 
but which redeemed its faults and crimes by its enthusiasm 
for everything beautiful and grand, by the masterpieces 
which it inspired, and by the artists and poets whom it gave 
mankind, and who will forever plead its cause with pos- 
terity. 

Pericles. — Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, the conqueror 
of Mycale, deserves special mention in this roll of honor. 
From a fancied facial resemblance to Pisistratus, he long 
held himself aloof from politics. Though by birth an aris- 
tocrat, he attached himself to the popular party. The 
powerful influence which he acquired by the dignity of his 
life and his military services he employed to restrain the 
evil and to develop the good impulses of the people. This 
little city controlled too vast an empire. To assure its con- 
tinuance, he sent out numerous colonies, which did not, like 
those of preceding centuries, become cities independent of 
the mother country, but rather fortresses and garrisons 



B.C. 400-430.] THE AGE OF PERICLES 69 

whereby the country in which they were established was 
held in submission to Athens. 

Great Intellects at Athens. — Pericles desired that Athens 
should be not only rich and powerful, but also glorious. 
He invited thither those superior men who then honored 
the Hellenic race. From all directions mankind flocked to 
the city of Minerva as an intellectual capital. The festi- 
vals were thronged, where the loftiest pleasures of the mind 
were associated with the most imposing spectacles of re- 
ligious pomp, of perfect art, and of nature in her most 
charming aspect. These festivals were not, like those of 
the Roman populace, sanguinary games of the amphitheatre 
with spectacles of death, blood, and corpses, but consisted 
of pious hymns, patriotic songs, and dramatic representa- 
tions of events in the history of the gods or of the heroes. 

Thus this period, often called the Age of Pericles, beheld 
at Athens one of the most brilliant bursts of civilization 
which has ever illumined the Avorld. What a century that 
was, when, in a single city, there met each other Sophocles 
and Euripides, two of the greatest tragic poets of all ages ; 
Lysias, the powerful orator; Herodotus, the inimitable nar- 
rator; Meton, the astronomer, and Hippocrates, the father 
of medicine; Aristophanes, foremost of the comic poets 
of antiquity; Phidias, the most illustrious of its artists; 
Apollodorus, Zeuxis Polygnotus, and Parrhasius, its most 
celebrated painters ; and in conclusion, two immortal phi- 
losophers, Anaxagoras and Socrates. If we remember that 
this city had just lost ^schylus, and that it was soon to 
possess Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, we 
shall not be surprised that it was called " the preceptress 
of Greece," and that it became the teacher of the world. 

The Parthenon. — We still read the works of those poets, 
historians, and philosophers, but of the achievements of the 
artists only fragments remain. Nevertheless when, seated 
on the tribune from which Demosthenes spoke, one con- 
templates the Acropolis, and beholds the exquisite grace, 
the incomparable beauty, and the imposing grandeur which 
those ruins of what once were the Parthenon, the Erec- 
theum, and the Propylsea still preserve, he is overwhelmed 
with admiration. However vivid be in his mind the memory 
of vast Egyptian monuments, he says to himself that the 
art eternal is here. 



HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 457-i2i. 



VI 

RIVALRY OF SPARTA, ATHENS, AND THEBES 

Irritation of the Allies against Athens. — After the Persian 
wars were finished, Athens continued to exact tribute 
money from her confederates on the plea that the Greeks 
must be ready to repel a fresh invasion. The money thus 
collected she spent upon herself. The allies grew tired of 
always paying for those monuments and festivals, which 
gave such brilliancy to only one city. When their com- 
plaints were harshly repressed, they addressed mute suppli- 
cations to Sparta. Jealous of the glory of Athens, Sparta 
labored to form a continental league which she could oppose 
to that of the maritime cities and islands which were sub- 
ject to the Athenians. From 457 to 431 there were several 
hostile encounters, but the general war did not break out 
until the Thebans, who were allies of Sparta, attacked 
Platsea, which was an ally of Athens. 

The Peloponnesian War to the Peace of Nicias (431-424). 
— The struggle at first consisted only of pillaging expedi- 
tions on both sides. The Spartans devastated Attica every 
spring, while every summer the Athenian fleet ravaged the 
coasts of the Peloponnesus. Unfortunately, in the third 
year, a pestilence mowed down the people packed together 
in Athens, and carried off Pericles. Demagogues, unable to 
control the masses, took the place of the dead statesman. 
Cleon, the new popular favorite, gave free rein to the pas- 
sions of the crowd. After the revolt of Mitylene in 427, 
the Athenian mob condemned a whole people to death, 
and a thousand Mitylenean prisoners were slain. From 
429 to 426 the successes were balanced. The Boeotians de- 
stroyed Plataea, but Potidsea was captured by the Athenians. 
In 424 Brasidas took Amphipolis, thereby apparently giv- 
ing the advantage to Lacedsemon, but Demosthenes seized 
Pylos, and thence called the helots to liberty, while 400 
Spartans, who had allowed themselves to be shut up in 
Sphacteria while attempting to reconquer Pylos, were them- 



B.C. 421-408.] RIVALRY OF SPARTA, ATHENS, AND THEBES 71 

selves overpowered and made prisoners. The Lacedaemo- 
nian allies, the Boeotians and Megarians, were beaten. The 
Athenians in turn met a check at Delium, and Cleon was 
slain at Potida^a. The Spartan, Brasidas, also fell in the 
same action. The partisans of peace then regained the 
upper hand (421), and Nicias caused the treaty to be signed 
which bears his name. 

The Sicilian Expedition. Alcibiades (425-413). — This 
peace upset the calculations of the ambitious and brilliant 
Alcibiades, the nephew of Pericles. As he desired war that 
he might win distinction, he proposed and caused to be 
voted the disastrous expedition to Sicily, which might per- 
haps have succeeded, had he not been accused of sacrilege 
and recalled. The traitor then fled to Sparta, and from 
there directed fatal blows against his own country. The 
siege of Syracuse, weakly conducted by Nicias, ended in the 
destruction of the Athenian fleet and army (413). The 
leaders were put to death by the Syracusans, and the sol- 
diers sold as slaves. 

This disaster dealt the power of Athens a blow from 
which she did not recover. By the advice of AlciJ^iades, 
the Spartans fortified Decelea at the entrance to Attica, 
which they held as though besieged, and allied themselves 
with the Persians. Athens heroically braved the storm, 
displayed unexpected resources, and held all her allies to 
their duty. Fortunately for her, Alcibiades was compelled 
to flee from Sparta. He withdrew into Asia, and Avon the 
good-will of Tissaphernes, by showing him the advantage to 
the great king in supporting a war so useful to the Persian 
Empire. By the promise of subsidies from Persia, Alcibi- 
ades seduced an Athenian army then at Samos, and brought 
about a revolution at Athens. The democracy was curbed 
by the establishment of a superior council, with 400 mem- 
bers, which replaced the senate, and by an assembly of 
, 5000 chosen citizens, which replaced the assembly of the 
people (411). But the army of Alcibiades, while appoint- 
ing Alcibiades as its general, repudiated the new govern- 
ment, which fell at the end of four months. The Assembly 
of the Five Thousand was retained, however, and the recon- 
ciliation of the army and people was sealed by the recall of 
Alcibiades. Two naval battles won in the Hellespont (411), 
a great victory on land and sea near Cyzicus (410), and 
lastly the capture of Byzantium (408), consolidated the 



72 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 407-396. 

dominion of Athens over Thrace and Ionia, and Alcibiades 
made a triumphal return to his country (407). But the 
same year several disasters which he was unable to prevent 
aroused suspicion ; he was again stripped of his power and 
forced into exile. He finally perished at the hands of the 
Persians. 

The Battle of iEgos Potamos, Capture of Athens (404). — 
The younger Cyrus, who was already plotting the overthrow 
of his brother, King Artaxerxes II, then held command 
in Asia Minor. Por the accomplishment of his projects he 
counted upon the assistance of the Spartans, whom he re- 
garded as the best soldiers in Greece or in the world. So 
he gave them unreserved support. By the crushing vic- 
tory of ^Egos Potamos, Lysander wrested from Athens the 
empire of the sea (405). Athens was unable to resist 
further, and was captured the following year. Her walls 
were razed, her fleet reduced to twelve galleys, and the 
government intrusted to an oligarchy of thirty tyrants, 
who sanctioned abominable atrocities, and even put to death 
one of their colleagues, Theramenes, for having suggested 
moderation. After a few months a returned exile, Thrasy- 
boulos, defeated the army of the tyrants and reestablished 
the former constitution (403). 

Four years later Socrates was condemned to drink hem- 
lock. He was one of the most illustrious victims of super- 
stition and intolerance. 

Power of Sparta. Expedition of the Ten Thousand. Age- 
silaus. — The supremacy in the Greek world had passed from 
Athens to Lacedsemon, who used it badly. She did little 
for art or learning, and her chiefs displayed nothing but 
brutal rapacity and greed. 

The younger Cyrus was pursuing his plans. With thir- 
teen thousand Greek mercenaries, he made his way as far 
as the neighborhood of Babylon, and won the battle of Cu- 
naxa, but he died in the moment of triumph (401). The 
Greeks, surrounded on all sides, managed, under the leader- 
ship of the Lacedaemonian Clearchus, and afterwards of the 
Athenian Xenophon, to make their way across four hundred 
leagues of country, over the pathless mountains of upper 
Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Pontus, to the shores of the 
Black Sea. This famous retreat, known as that of the Ten 
Thousand, revealed the weakness of the great empire. There- 
fore as early as the year 396 Agesilaus, king of Sparta, pro- 



B.C. 396-371.] RIVALRY OF SPARTA, ATHENS, AND THEBES 73 

posed its conquest. Conqueror of the satraps of Asia Minor, 
ally of the Egyptians, who had again revolted, and master of 
the forces of many barbarian kings, he was about to under- 
take the Persian expedition, sixty years before Alexander, 
when the Persians found means to incite a war against 
Sparta in the very heart of Greece itself. At their instiga- 
tion, Corinth, Thebes, and Argos formed a league, which 
Athens and Thessaly joined. Agesilaus, thus recalled from 
Asia, won the battle of Coronea, which strengthened the 
dominion of Sparta on land; but the Athenian Con on, in 
command of a Phoenician fleet, deprived her of the empire 
of the sea, and with Persian gold rebuilt the ramparts of 
Athens. 

Treaty of Antalcidas. — The Spartans, disturbed by the 
strength of their rivals, sent Antalcidas to treat with the 
great king. The Asiatic Greeks became his subjects, Athens 
retained Lemnos, Imbros, and Seyros, but the independence 
of the other Greek cities was recognized (387). In Cimon's 
treaty it had been Athens who imposed her conditions upon 
Persia. The change had come, not because Persia was more 
powerful, but Greece less virtuous. Everything was for sale, 
and as the great king had much gold, he bought everything, 
orators, soldiers, fleets, cities. The outcome of a war no 
longer depended upon the patriotism of the citizens and the 
talent of the leaders, but upon an obolus more or less in the 
wages of the mercenaries which induced them to pass from 
one camp to the other. 

Struggle between Sparta and Thebes. Epaminondas (381- 
362). — The alliance against Sparta had placed Greece at 
the feet of Persia. Yet Sparta seemed strong, and believed 
herself able to act as she pleased. One day she destroyed 
Mantinea without cause and overthrew Olynthus. Finally 
one of her generals, Phibidias, violating all justice, sur- 
prised the Cadmeum, the citadel of Thebes, which was then 
the ally of Lacedsemon. The Spartans retained what treach- 
ery had given them (382). The Theban Pelopidas at the 
head of many exiles delivered his country, and reunited in 
a common alliance all the cities of Boeotia. At Leuctra 
Epaminondas crushed the army the Spartans had sent 
against them (371), and ventured to carry the war into the 
Peloponnesus. He fought his way to the very walls of 
Sparta, which however he was unable to enter. To hold 
it in check he built on its flanks Megalopolis and Messene, 



74 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 362. 

wliicli became fortresses and camps of refuge for the Arca- 
dian and Messenian fpes of Sparta (369). Against Thebes 
Sparta excited Athens, Persia, and Dionysius, tyrant of 
Syracuse. Then Epaminondas invaded the Peloponnesus 
a second time, made an alliance with the Persian court, and 
created a navy of one hundred vessels which supported 
Rhodes, Chios, and Byzantium in revolt against Athens. 
Unhax^pily for Thebes, Epaminondas a third time invaded 
the Peloponnesus, and perished in the arms of victory at 
Mantineia (362). The power of his country fell with him. 



B.C. 359.] PHILIP OF HAVE I) ON, AND DEMOSTHENES 75 



VII 

PHILIP OP MACEDON, AND DEMOSTHENES 

Philip. — Macedon, a vast region to the north of Thessaly 
and of the ^gean Sea, very early had kings who, sur- 
rounded by barbarous peoples and dominated by a powerful 
aristocracy, had hitherto played only an insignificant part. 
Before Philip, the father of Alexander, Macedon was even 
in a desperate situation. She paid tribute to the lUyrians, 
and the haughty intervention of Thebes and Athens in her 
affairs only increased the chaos. Philip, who had been sent 
to Thebes as a hostage, was brought up in the house of 
Epaminondas, and saw how the genius of one man could 
elevate a nation. Therefore on attaining power (359) he 
was able in two years, by means of the phalanx which he 
had organized in accordance with the ideas of Epaminondas, 
to rid the kingdom of the barbarians and himself of two 
competitors. 

Capture of Amphipolis. Occupation of Thessaly. — Macedon 
once set free, he wished to enlarge and make it the ruler 
of Greece. The Greek colonies, established on her coasts, 
cut her off from the sea and prevented her having a navy ; 
so he captured them one after another. First he purchased 
the neutrality of the powerful republic of Olynthus by 
giving it Potidsea, which he had seized. Then he took 
Amphipolis, which Athens deceived by his promises was 
uuable to succor. Next he completed the conquest of the 
country between the Nestos and the Strymon, where he 
found building-timber for his navy, and the gold mines of 
Mount Pangseus, that furnished him a revenue of a thou- 
sand talents. Afterwards he penetrated into Thrace, which 
he partially subdued, and attacked Byzantium, which was 
delivered by Athens. Checked in that quarter, he turned 
to another. He interfered in the affairs of Thessaly, where 
he overthrew the tyrants of Phera3, and appointed himself 
the champion of religion against the Phocians, who had just 
been condemned by the Amphictyonic Council for having 



76 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 352-338. 

tilled a sacred field. He crushed them in a great battle 
(352). The grateful Thessalians opened three of their 
towns to the avenger of the gods. He put a garrison in- 
side and thereby held the entire province. He wished to 
go further and seize Thermopylae. But the Athenians by 
their vigilance at first frustrated this project, as they had 
frustrated one attempt upon Byzantium and another upon 
Europe. 

Demosthenes. — The Athenians alone seemed active in the 
interests of Greece. They were led by a great citizen, 
Demosthenes, who constantly employed his vigorous elo- 
quence in unveiling the ambitious designs of the king. But 
his philippics could not overcome craft supported by force. 
OlynthuS; which Demosthenes tried to save, fell, and with it 
the barrier that embarrassed Macedonia the most (348). 
Athens, now menaced in Euboea and even in Attica, whither 
Macedonian troops had come to remove the trophies of Mara- 
thon and Salamis, signed a peace which Demosthenes him- 
self advised and which he negotiated with the king. 

Second Sacred War (346). Battle of Chaeronea (338).— 
While Athens confiding in this treaty gave herself up to 
festivals, Philip passed through Thermopylae, overwhelmed 
the Phocians and made them give him the vote which they 
had in the Amphictyonic Council (346). This was a de- 
cisive step, for, once a member of the Hellenic body, the 
king could make the Amphictyonic Council speak in ac- 
cordance with his interests and use it as his own instrument 
of oppression. Nevertheless, since he knew how to wait, 
he halted almost immediately in order to avoid any dan- 
gerous outbreak of despair, and turned his arms toward the 
Danube, which he made the boundary of his kingdom, and 
toward Thrace, where Phocion still prevented him from 
seizing the Greek colonies established on the Hellespont. 
While he was so far from Thermopylae, his agents worked 
for him in Greece, ^schines caused the management of a 
new sacred war against the Locrians to be intrusted to him. 
For the second time religion was going to ruin this far 
from religious people. Philip, on arriving in central Greece, 
seized Elatea. 

Demosthenes immediately broke silence. He reunited 
Athens and Thebes for a supreme effort, but Greek liberty 
was overthrown at Chaeronea (338). The victor did himself 
honor by his moderation, and in order to justify the supreme 



B.C. 336.] PHILIP OF MACEBON, AND DEMOSTHENES 77 

authority which he had just grasped, he had himself ap- 
pointed by the Amphictyonic Council general-in-chief of the 
Greeks against the Persians. He was about to repeat the 
expedition of Agesilaus, though with far larger forces. 

Macedon was now a powerful state extending from Ther- 
mopylae to the Danube, and from the Adriatic to the Black 
Sea. Its government had nothing to fear from internal 
troubles or pretenders to the throne. The aristocracy, the 
cause of previous disorders, had been won over by the glory 
of the monarch, by honors and offices, or were restrained by 
the hostages which they had been compelled to give that the 
royal guard might be composed entirely of young nobles. 
But death arrested Philip at the age of forty-seven in the 
midst of his plans. He was assassinated by a noble Pau- 
sanias, probably instigated by the Persians (336). 



78 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 336-332. 



VIII 

ALEXANDER 

(336-333) 

Submission of Greece to Alexander (336-334). — Great 
disturbances broke out at the news that Philip had left as 
his heir Alexander, a young man of twenty. However, 
Alexander rapidly subdued Thrace and lUyricum, van- 
quished the barbarians on both banks of the Danube, and, 
learning that the Macedonian garrison had been massacred 
at Thebes, arrived in Boeotia thirteen days after leaving the 
Danube. " Demosthenes called me a child," he said, " when 
I was in Illyricum, and a youth when I arrived in Thessaly. 
Under the walls of Athens I will show him that I am a 
man." He took Thebes, slew six thousand of its inhabi- 
tants, and sold thirty thousand into slavery. The terrified 
Greeks at Corinth conferred upon him the title, already 
bestowed upon his father, of general-in-chief for the Persian 
War. 

Expedition against Persia (334). Conquest of the Asiatic 
Coast and Egypt. — He crossed the Hellespont with 30,000 
foot and 4500 horse, defeated at Granicus 110,000 Persians, 
then marched along the coast so as to shut Greece from the 
agents of Darius, and thus deprive them of the means of 
exciting disorders there. Darius tried to arrest him at Issus 
in Cilicia. Alexander vanquished him (333). Disdaining 
to pursue he continued the plan which he had marked out 
in the occupation of the maritime cities. Without anxiet}^ 
he devoted seven months to the siege of Tyre, and spent 
another year in Egypt, where he sacrificed to the native 
gods so as to win over the inhabitants. He founded Alex- 
andria, and induced the priests of Ammon to bestow upon 
him the title of Son of the Gods, which the ancient Pha- 
raohs had borne (332). 

Conquest of Persia. Death of Darius. Murder of Clitus 
(334-327). — After conquering the maritime provinces of 
the empire, Alexander traversed Palestine and Syria, 




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B.C. 332-327.] ■ ALEXANDER 79 

crossed the Euphrates, where the Persians did not oppose 
his passage, and the Tigris, which they defended no better, 
and at last attacked and completely defeated Darivis in the 
plain of Arbela (331). Sure that no army of the Persian 
king could resist his Macedonians, he allowed that prince 
to again flee toward his eastern provinces. He descended 
to Babylon, where he sacrificed to Bel, whose temple over- 
thrown by Xerxes he restored, and hurried to occupy the 
other capitals of Darius : Susa, which contained immense 
riches ; Pasargadse, the sanctuary of the empire ; and Persep- 
olis, which he burned, thereby announcing to the whole East 
that a new conqueror had seated himself upon the throne 
of Cyrus. With headlong speed he subdued, or caused his 
generals to subdue, the neighboring mountaineers. He en- 
tered Ecbactana a week after the king had left it, continued 
the pursuit and Avas on the point of again attacking him, 
when three satraps, whose prisoner the unfortunate prince 
had become, cut the throat of Darius and left only a corpse 
for the conqueror. Bessus, one of the assassins, tried to 
make Bactriana a centre of resistance. Alexander gave 
him no time. He rapidly traversed Aria and Bactriana as 
far as the Oxus. Bessus, who had retreated beyond that 
river, was delivered into his hands, and a council of Medes 
and Persians surrendered him to the brother of Darius, who 
caused him to undergo a thousand tortures. 

Alexander wintered in those regions. On the shores of 
the laxartes he founded a new Alexandria, which he peopled 
with Greek mercenaries, invalid soldiers, and barbarians. 
The capture of the Sogdian Eock, the marriage of Alexan- 
der with Roxana, the daughter of a Persian nobleman, and 
the foundation of many cities completed the subjugation of 
Sogdiana, where the conqueror left great but also terrible 
memories. He tortured Philotas and his father, Parmenio, 
because of a conspiracy which they had not revealed, mur- 
dered Clitus during an orgy, and put to death the philoso- 
pher Callisthenes for a plot to which he was a stranger. 

Alexander beyond the Indus. His Return to Babylon, and 
Death (327-323). — The Persian Empire no longer existed. 
It was now the Macedonian Empire. Alexander did not 
find it large enough, and wished to add India thereto. Upon 
the banks of the Cophen he met an Indian king, Taxiles, 
who entreated his aid against Porus, another Indian monarch. 
His soldiers felled a whole forest to construct a fleet upon 



80 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 325. 

the Indus, and Porus was conquered and captured. " How 
do you wish to be treated ? " Alexander asked his prisoner. 
" Like a king," replied Porus. The captive was allowed to 
retain his states, which were also enlarged, and was assigned 
the duty of maintaining the country in submission. Alex- 
ander wished to penetrate into the valley of the Ganges, 
but his army refused to go farther and he was obliged to 
halt. After marking the extreme limit of his triumphant 
course by twelve altars around which he celebrated games, 
he returned to the Indus, which he descended to the ocean, 
subjugating the people along the banks, founding cities, 
dockyards, and ports, and carefully exploring the mouths of 
the river. He returned to Babylon through the deserts of 
Gedrosia and Carmania, through which no army had ever 
marched. Meanwhile his admiral, Nearchus, coasted with 
the fleet along the shore and returned by the Persian Gulf 
that he might indicate to commerce the road to India. 

Notwithstanding the many recruits which Macedon and 
Greece had sent him, Alexander could not have founded so 
many cities and maintained his subjects in obedience, if he 
had not pursued a wise policy toward the conquered. He 
sacrificed to their gods, respected their customs, left the 
civil government in the hands of the natives, and endeavored 
to unite victors and vanquished by marriages, of which he 
himself set the example by wedding Barsina, or Statira, the 
daughter of Darius. The military forces alone remained in 
the hands of his Macedonians. He counted that the benefi- 
cent influence of commerce would create between East and 
West, between Persia and Greece, common interests and 
weld those many diverse peoples into one formidable em- 
pire. Death overtook him at Babylon (323) and put an end 
to his mighty plans. No one after him had sufficient 
strength or authority to take them up. When about to 
draw his last breath, he had given his ring to Perdiccas. 
His other lieutenants asked him to whom he left his crown. 
^' To the most worthy, but I fear I shall have a bloody 
funeral." He was only thirty-two years of age and had 
reigned twelve. 

The Age of Alexander. — Great men again in the age of 
Philip and Alexander added to the glorious patrimony 
which their ancestors had bequeathed. Praxiteles, the most 
graceful of Greek sculptors, and the painter Pamphilus, the 
master of Apelles, followed Phidias, Polycletus, and Zeuxis. 



B.C. 323.] ALEXANDER 81 

.Nevertheless art diminished. Taste became less loure and 
style less severe. Too much was yielded to form. Art 
spoke to the eye rather than to the mind. Eloquence and 
philosophy, however, showed no decline. The tribune of 
Athens resounded with the impassioned and virile accents of 
Demosthenes, Lycurgus, Hyperides, and Hegesippus. yEs- 
chines, the rival of Demosthenes, contributed the movement 
and splendor of his periods, and Phocion his virtue, the 
most powerful weapon of oratory. 

After the death of Socrates his disciples dispersed. 
Plato, the most illustrious of them all, had returned to 
Athens and taught in the gardens of Academus. The 
Greeks, charmed by the matchless grace of his speech, 
reported that his father was Apollo and that the bees of 
Hymettus had deposited their honey upon his lips in the 
cradle. Aristotle, his pupil and rival, the teacher of Alex- 
ander, has fastened upon himself the eternal attention of 
mankind by other merits. His vast and mighty genius 
desired to understand all, the laws of the human mind as 
well as the laws of nature. Philosophy still pursues the 
double path which those preeminent intellects marked out, 
idealistic with the one, rational and positive with the other. 
Xenophon, a gentle spirit and amiable narrator, ranks far 
below them. 



82 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 323-G4. 



IX 

CONVERSION OP GREECE AND OF THE GREEK KING- 
DOMS INTO ROMAN PROVINCES 

(333-146) 

Dismemberment of Alexander's Empire. — Three months 
after Alexander's death, his wife Roxana gave birth to 
Alexander Aigos. The conqueror left a natural son named 
Hercules; a half-brother, the imbecile Arrhideus, and two 
sisters, Cleopatra and Thessalonica. His imperious mother, 
(Jlympias, was still alive. After long debates Arrhideus 
and Alexander Aigos were both proclaimed. Antipater was 
placed over the European forces, Craterus was made a sort 
of guardian to Arrhideus, and Perdiccas became a general 
prime minister. Continual convulsions during twenty-four 
years resulted from this divided authority, and cost the lives 
of all the members of the royal family and of a majority of 
the generals. The empire was rent asunder along the lines 
of its ancient nationalities. Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and 
Macedon were reconstructed after the decisive battle of 
Ipsus, where Antigonus made a last effort to restore unity 
(301). 

Kingdoms of Syria (201-64) and Egypt (301-30).— Seleu- 
cus ISTicator, one of the victors of Ipsus, founded the dynasty 
of the Seleucidse, to whom he gave for capitals Seleucia and 
Antioch and for empire all the countries comprised between 
the Indus and the J^gean Sea. His son could not prevent 
the Gauls from settling in Galatia. Antiochus II, despite 
his surname of the God, saw two kingdoms rise in his east- 
ern provinces, that of the Bactrians, which did not last, and 
that of the Parthians, which renewed the Persian monarchy. 
Antiochus III the Great (224-187) ventured to attack the 
Romans, who vanquished him at Thermopylae (191) and 
Magnesia (190), wrested from him Asia on this side of the 
Tarsus, and reduced Syria itself to a Roman province (64). 

Egypt saw better days .under the first of the Lagidse, all 



B.C. 301-30.] GREECE BECOMES A ROMAN PROVINCE 83 

of whom bore the name of Ptolemy. It was then a power- 
ful state, the centre of the world's commerce, the asylum 
of letters and science, with a magnificent library at Alexan- 
dria. But the clever kings were speedily succeeded by 
debauched, cruel, incapable sovereigns, and after them by 
foreign intervention. 

Thus Ptolemy Soter (301) added to his kingdom Cyre- 
naica, Cyprus, Ooele-Syria, and Phoenicia. Philadelphus 
(285) developed the navy and maintained two successful 
wars, one against his brother Magas, governor of Cyrene, 
and the other against the king of Syria, who was unable to 
conquer Egypt. Euergetes (247) penetrated in Asia as far 
as Bactriana and in Africa to the interior of Ethiopia, while 
his lieutenants subjugated the coasts of Arabia Felix to 
secure the trade-route to India. Philopator (222) began the 
decline, which Epiphanes (205) hastened by placing himself 
under the tutelage of the Romans, who thenceforth con- 
stantly intermeddled in Egyptian affairs till the days of Csesar 
and Cleopatra. The latter was a dangerous siren, to whom 
Antony sacrificed his honor, his fortune, and his life. Octa- 
vius resisted her, and the queen, threatened with adorning a 
Roman triumph, died from the poison of an asp. Egypt 
became a Roman province (30), as the kingdom of Perga- 
mos in Asia Minor had done (129) by virtue of the testa- 
ment of its last king. 

Kingdom of Macedon (301-146). Cynocephalse and Pydna. 
— Macedon did not exist so long, but fell with greater honor, 
for her last two kings dared withstand Rome, who had 
become through her triumph over Carthage the greatest 
military power in the world. The descendants of Antigo- 
nus, who was vanquished at Ipsus, had secured for themselves 
the throne of Macedon, and like Philip and Alexander tried 
to obtain the supreme power over Greece. During the 
second Punic War, the Romans by the conquest of lUyri- 
cum gained a footing on the Greek peninsula. Philip of 
Macedon tried to drive them into the sea, and made with 
Hannibal (215) a treaty which was to assure him the posses- 
sion of Greece ; but a defeat on the banks of the Aoiis forced 
him to beat a rapid retreat to his kingdom. The Roman 
senate, taking advantage of the enmities which his ambition 
had aroused, announced itself the protector of the nations 
threatened by him. He had the impudence to provoke 
Rome, now rid of Hannibal. The reply was prompt and 



84 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 322-221. 

terrible. The legions crushed at Cynocephalae the phalanx, 
which had conquered G-reece and Asia (197). His son 
Perseus was no more fortunate at Pydna (168). In 146 
Macedon was effaced from the list of nations and the king- 
dom of Alexander was henceforth nothing but a Roman 
province. 

Death of Demosthenes (322). The Achaean League (251- 
146). — While the successors of Alexander were disputing 
the fragments of his purple robe in Asia, Greece made an 
effort to recover her liberty. Demosthenes, who had re- 
mained the soul of the national party, and Athens, who 
hoped to be able to break once more the dominion of the 
stranger, stirred up the Lanian war. It began well but 
ended in disaster. Demosthenes was banished and took 
poison (522). On the base of the statue which, later on, 
his fellow-countrymen erected to his memory, these words 
were inscribed : ''If thy power had equalled thy eloquence, 
Greece would not to-day be captive." Phocion perished five 
years later by the order of the Macedonians. However, the 
Greek cities profiting by the disorders in Macedon regained 
their liberty; but the foreign rule when it withdrew left 
behind, like an impure deposit, tyrants in every town. Sup- 
ported by mercenaries, these men terrorized over the citizens 
and extorted from their cowardice the gold which served to 
rivet their bonds. One man, Aratus, undertook to overthrow 
these detestable rulers. First he reconstituted the ancient 
federation of the twelve Achaean cities. Then he delivered 
Sicyon (251), Corinth, Megara, Trezene, Argos, Mantineia, 
Epidaurus, and Megalopolis from their tyrants, and made 
alliance with the ^tolian league in order to raise a barrier 
against the ambition of Macedon. To extend his patriotic 
work to central Greece, he aided in the deliverance of Athens 
and Orchomenus. A few efforts more and the Achaean league 
would have embraced the whole of Hellas. 

Unfortunately, Sparta revived with a spasm of reform. 
Cleomenes made all property common, reestablished the pub- 
lic meals and reconstituted with foreigners a new Spartan 
people which immediately contended with the Achaeans, and 
disputed their preponderance in the Peloponnesus. Aratus 
was constrained to implore assistance from the Macedoni- 
ans, who defeated Cleomenes at Sellasia (221). This defeat 
crushed new Sparta, but placed the Achaeans in depen- 
dence upon Macedon, who made everything bend before 



B.C. 221-146.] GREECE BECOMES A ROMAN PROVINCE 85 

her. The Romans becoming disqnietecl at this reviving 
strength prepared to intervene so as to destroy it. The 
violent deeds of Philip and the murder of Aratus gave 
them numerous allies, and the ^Etolians helped win the bat- 
tle of Cynocephalse. Victorious Rome took nothing for 
herself, but divided everything in order to weaken all. She 
destroyed the leagues in Thessaly and central Greece by 
declaring that every city should be free. The Greeks 
applauded, not without perceiving that this liberty would 
lead them to servitude. Philopoemen of Megalopolis, the 
worthy successor of Aratus, at the head of the Achaean 
league tried to delay the moment of inevitable ruin. Lace- 
dsemon, which had fallen into the hands of the tyrants, was 
a hotbed of intrigue. Philopoemen slew with his own hand 
in battle the tyrant Machanidas, and forced his successor 
Nabis to raise the siege of Messene. Entering Sparta as a 
victor, he united it to the Achaean league. It was not the 
policy of Rome that the whole Peloponnesus should form a 
single state. Her envoys urged Messene to revolt. Philo- 
poemen in an expedition against her fell from his horse, was 
captured and condemned to drink hemlock (183). 

During the war against Perseus, the Acheeans secretly 
but fervently desired his success, and for this Rome called 
them to account after the victory of Pydna. A thousand of 
their best citizens were deported to Italy (168). Released 
seventeen years afterwards, they brought back to their coiui- 
try an imprudent hatred of Rome. When the senate an- 
nounced that Corinth, Sparta, and Argos must cease to form 
part of the league, the Achseans flew to arms and fought the 
last battle for liberty (146) at Leucopetra, near Corinth. 
Corinth was burned by Mummius, Greece reduced to a prov- 
ince, and this people, who had held so great a place in the 
world, were lost in the ocean of the Roman power. 



86 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS 



SUMMARY OF GREEK HISTORY 

Services Rendered by the Greeks to General Civilization. 

— Epicharines, the creator of Greek comedy, said twenty- 
four centuries ago : " All blessings are bought from the 
gods by labor." What the poet said, Greece proved. By 
dint of an activity, of which no other people had until 
then ever furnished an example, did the Greeks succeed in 
taking so high a rank among the nations. They covered 
the coasts of the Mediterannean with flourishing cities. 
They raised a poor and petty country to mastery of the 
world by arms and commerce, but, above all, by civiliza- 
tion. 

Among the sciences by establishing the methods or pro- 
cesses they also created mathematics, geometry, mechanics, 
and astronomy, which Egypt and Chaldaea had only out- 
lined. They laid the foundations of botany and medicine. 

In the sciences indeed we have advanced much farther 
than they by following the path of patient investigation and 
pure reasoning which Hippocrates, Archimedes, and Aris- 
totle opened up, but in letters, arts, and philosophy the 
Greeks have remained the eternal masters. The Romans 
and the moderns have been only their pupils. 

They carried to perfection the epic poem with Homer; 
the elegy with Simonides; the ode with Pindar; tragedy 
with ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, who succeeded in 
making it grandly religious, patriotic and moral; comedy 
with Aristophanes and Menander ; history with Herodotus 
and Thucydides ; forensic and legal eloquence with Demos- 
thenes, ^schines, Isocrates, and Lysias. 

In the arts the world still follows their impulse and imi- 
tates their models. While varying their three orders, we 
copy their architecture. Their mutilated statues are the 
pride of our museums. Our decorative arts draw inspira- 
tion from the graceful designs of their vases or from the 
ornaments of their temples and tombs. The moderns have 



SUMMARY OF GREEK HISTORY 87 

created only one new art, music, and developed one ancient 
art, painting. 

In philosophy, as they had no holy books and conse- 
quently no body of hxed doctrines, no sacerdotal class 
jealously guarding for itself both dogma and learning, no 
social aristocracy limiting the field of thought, they allowed 
the utmost freedom to the mind. Thus they created moral 
and political philosophy in entire independence. They 
made it the domain of all and assigned as its only aim the 
quest of truth. Thereby they threw open to the human 
intellect an immense horizon. That which feeling only 
vaguely attained, reason proceeded to grasp, and with un- 
equalled power. What have twenty centuries added to the 
philosophical discoveries of the Hellenes ? 

In short, such was the fruitfulness of their prolific nature, 
that on the very ruins of Greek society sprang forth that 
elevated moral doctrine of stoicism which, combined with 
and modified by the Christian spirit, is still capable of 
developing great characters. 

The East, earlier than the Hellenes, gave birth to sages, 
but the people below them were only herds, docile to the 
voice of the master. In Greece, humanity became conscious 
of itself. There man assumed full possession of the facul- 
ties planted in him by the Creator, and of the sentiment 
of his own personal dignity. Slavery, preserved in the 
cities by the politicians and justified in books by the phi- 
losophers, was a relic of that past from which the emanci- 
pation of the freest nations is always slow. 

Defects of the Political and Religious Spirit among the 
Greeks. — Still, this picture has its shadows. Admirable 
political theorists, with Aristotle at their head, they were 
able to organize nothing but cities. The idea of a great 
state was unwelcome to them. Never, except partially 
and for a brief space during the Persian wars, or too late 
at the time of the Achaean league, did they consent to join 
their forces and destinies in fraternal union. Thus they 
lost their independence on that day when the half-barbaric, 
half-Hellenic, wholly military Macedonian monarchy was 
formed at their gates. To Kome their subjugation was 
still more easy. 

The Greek religion, so favorable to art and poetry, was 
less so to virtue. By representing the gods, personifica- 
tions of natural forces, as enslaved by the most shameful 



88 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS 

passions, committing theft, incest, and adultery, breathing 
hatred and revenge, it obscured the idea of uprightness, 
and rendered evil legitimate by the example of those who 
should have been the incarnation of good. Then when 
human reason contradicted the divine legends, Greek poly- 
theism at last found itself in that fatal condition wherein 
religion and the moral code are opposed to each other. 
The latter attacked the former and won the battle. The 
gods fell from Olympus. Grass grew in the courtyards 
of the temples. This would have been a gain, if the de- 
throned deities had been replaced by such a virile system 
of instruction as would enlighten and purify human reason. 
That virile instruction was found here and there on the 
lips of the poets and philosophers, but the masses did not 
listen. Delivered to the grovelling superstitions in which 
among the weak the great beliefs end, Greek religion was 
without defence when assailed by the Asiatic corruption 
introduced by the conquests of Alexander. Gold depraved 
alike men and institutions. The mercenaries of the Seleu- 
cidae and of the Ptolemies, men without a country inas- 
much as without liberty, lost together with their manly 
virtues the generous self-devotion which had made them 
so great at Marathon and Thermopylse, and the self-respect 
and reverence for the true and the beautiful which had 
formed so many good citizens and created so many master- 
pieces. Greece from time to time did still produce some 
superior men, but only as a long-time fertile but exhausted 
soil yields at intervals a scanty fruit. 



HISTORY OF THE ROMANS 



oXKc 



ROME. THE ANCIENT ROMAN CONSTITUTION 
(753-366) 

The Royal Period (753-510).— The fertile plains of 
Latiuni and Etruria meet under the Sabine mountains on 
the banks of the Tiber, the largest stream of the Italian 
peninsula. At some distance from its junction with the 
Anio, this river flows between nine hills, two of which, Ja- 
niculus and A^aticanus, dominate the right bank, while the 
other seven distinguish the left. It was there that Rome 
arose. 

Legend, which explains every beginning and delights in 
the marvellous, recognizes seven kings of Eome : Eomulus, 
the son of Mars, nursed by a she-wolf, the founder upon the 
Palatine of the present city ; Numa, the religious king, 
whom the nymph Egeria inspired; Tullus Hostilius, who 
overthrew Alba Longa after the combat between the Ho- 
ratii and Curiatii; Ancus Martins, the founder of Ostia; 
Tarquinius Priscus, who perhaps owed his crown to an 
Etruscan conquest of Rome ; Servius Tullius, the legislator ; 
and lastly Tarquinius Superbus, the abominable tyrant 
Avhom the Romans expelled. 

History, more sedate, has many doubts concerning this 
royal period of Avhich the only glimpse is afforded by 
charming tales. Nevertheless it credits the foundation 
upon the Palatine of Roma Quadrata, a city whose walls 
have recently been discovered. This city exercised its 
robust youth against its Latin, Sabine and Etruscan neigh- 
bors, and grew so rapidly that Servius was obliged to erect 
those extensive walls which sufficed during the whole period 

89 



90 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 510-493. 

of the republic. It had customs, institutions and a political 
organization such as would require much time to develop. 
We must admit that under her last king E-ome was already 
the capital of Latium, the strongest power in Italy. Her 
inhabitants constituted two peoples, as it were the patri- 
cians and the plebeians. The patricians consisted of fami- 
lies, each of which formed a clan with its own gods, its 
common property and its chief. The latter was at once 
high priest of the domestic altar, judge without appeal over 
his wife and children, patron whom his clients obeyed, 
absolute master of his slaves, and in the forum and at the 
curia a member of the sovereign people who elected the 
prince, enacted the laws and decided questions of peace and 
war. The plebeians were a confused mass of conquered 
captives, transported to the city, of foreigners settled there, 
and perhaps of natives dispossessed by the original con- 
quest. They had nothing in common with the patricians, 
neither gods nor marriage nor political rights. Nevertheless 
to Servius is attributed the division : of the city into four 
quarters or urban tribes; of the territory into twenty-six 
cantons or rural tribes; of the people, patricians and ple- 
beians, into live classes accoi-ding to wealth, and into 193 
hundreds or centuries. The first class alone had ninety- 
eight centuries. After the kings were expelled, as each 
century represented one vote, it had ninety-eight votes, 
while all the other classes combined had only ninety-five. 

The Republic. Consuls. Tribunes (510-493). — The patri- 
cians overthrew Tarquin and replaced the king by two con- 
suls, chosen annually by them from among themselves. This 
was therefore an aristocratic revolution. Brutus, one of the 
consuls, discovered that his sons were implicated in a con- 
spiracy to recall the king. He ordered that they should be 
put to death and stoically witnessed their execution. Tar- 
quin sought revenge by rousing all the neighboring peoples 
against Rome. The bloody victory of Lake Regillus saved 
the city, but her strength was undermined by debts incurred 
by the losses and expenses of the recent wars. The Roman 
law favored the creditors, who abused their rights, and the 
poor in resentment would not allow themselves to be en- 
rolled. Then the senate created the dictatorship, an abso- 
lute magistracy from which there was no appeal. Its power, 
more arbitrary than that of the kings had ever been, was to 
last six months. The people were terrified and yielded, but 



B.C. 4<»:3^48.] ROME. THE ANCIENT ROMAN CONSTITUTION 91 

the violence of the creditors increased. At last the poor 
abandoned the city and retired to Mons Sacer. They came 
back only after tribunes had been promised them, who 
should be annually elected from the plebeians and by their 
veto could reverse the decisions of the consuls and senate. 
At first the tribunes employed their power as a shield 
wherewith to defend the people. Later on they used it to 
attack the nobles and make themselves masters of the republic. 

The Decemvirate and the Twelve Tables. — The years 
which elapsed between the establishment of the tribuneship 
and that of the decemvirate were filled by petty wars and 
internal troubles. The tribune Terentillus Arsa in 461 
demanded that a code, written and known to the citizens, 
should be drawn up. For a long time the patricians re- 
sisted. At last the proposition was passed, and decemvirs 
were elected with unlimited powers to draw up the new 
laws. One of them, Appius Claudius, tried to usurp the 
authority. He fell in consequence of an outrage, which 
forced a father to kill his daughter to save her from dis- 
honor (449). 

In the legislation of the Twelve Tables, published by the 
decemvirs (448), attacks upon property were cruelly pun- 
ished. The thief might be killed with impunity at night 
and even during the day if he defended himself. " Who- 
ever sets fire to a lot of grain shall be bound, beaten with 
rods and burned." " The insolvent debtor shall be sold or 
cut in pieces." For offences regarded as less grave, we find 
two systems of penalties in use among all barbarous peo- 
ples, the talion or corporal reprisals, and settlement by, 
agreement. " Whoever breaks a limb shall pay three hun- 
dred Roman pounds to the injured person. If he does not 
settle with him, let him be subjected to the lex talionis." 

However some provisions favored the plebeians. The 
rate of interest was diminished and guaranties for individ- 
ual liberty were provided. " Let the false witness and the 
corrupt judge be hurled from the rock," said the law. 
"The people shall always have the right of appeal from the 
sentence of the magistrates. The people alone in their 
assemblies by centuries shall have the power to pronounce 
sentence of death." Thus criminal jurisdiction was be- 
stowed upon the people. Thus the power passed to the 
comitia centuriata, where according to their property patri- 
cians and plebeians were mingled without distinction. 



92 HISTORY OF THE ROMAN'S [b.c. 448-444. 

The general character of the law was another advantage 
for the plebeians. "No more personal laws." The civil 
legislation of the Twelve Tables recognized only Roman 
citizens. Its provisions were not made for one order or one 
class. Its formula was always " If any one," inasmuch as 
patrician and plebeian, senator and priest and laborer, were 
equal in its eyes. Thus, by ignoring differences formerly 
so profound, was proclaimed the definite union of the two 
peoples. It was a new people, all the citizens in a body, 
which now held sovereign authority and was the source of 
all power and all right. " Whatever the people shall ordain 
shall constitute the final law." Thus the people had at- 
tained through the Twelve Tables several material benefits, 
which may be summed up as civil equality. Not yet eligi- 
ble to many offices, their political equality was still in the 
future. 

The Plebeians attain Admission to All Offices (448-286). — 
The revolution of 510, instituted by the patricians, had ben- 
efited only the aristocracy. That of 448, instituted by the 
people, benefited only the people. The new consuls, Hora- 
tius and Valerius, forbade under pain of death that any 
magistracy without appeal should ever be created, gave the 
force of law to the plebiscites or votes passed in the 
assembly of the tribes, and repeated the anathema pro- 
nounced against any one who should attack the inviolability 
of the tribuneship. Nevertheless the prohibition of inter- 
marriage and the occupation of all offices by the patricians 
still maintained an insulting distinction between the two 
orders. In 445 the tribune Canuleius demanded the aboli- 
tion of the prohibition regarding marriage, and his col- 
leagues demanded that plebeians should be eligible to the 
consulship. This was equivalent to demanding political 
equality. The patricians were indignant, but the people 
withdrew to the Janiculine Hill. The senate, thinking 
that custom would be stronger than law, accepted the prop- 
osition concerning intermarriage. Instead of granting the 
consulship to the plebeians, they diminished its functions. 
Two new magistrates, called censors, were appointed in 444, 
at first for five years and later for eighteen months. These 
officers were to take the census, administer the public do- 
mains and finances, regulate the classes, draw up the list of 
the senate and of the equestrian order, and have control of 
the city police. The other consular duties — military and 



B.c.444-2S(>.] ROME. THE ANCIENT ROMAN CONSTITUTION 93 

judicial admiuistvation, presidency of the assemblies and of 
the senate, and protection of the city and laws — were 
divided and intrusted to three, four, and sometimes six 
generals under the name of military tribunes. 

The constitution of 444 made plebeians eligible to the 
military tribuneship, yet until the year 400 no plebeian at- 
tained it. Meanwhile Rome was carrying on a five years' 
siege of Veil, which the patrician Camillus finally captured. 
The Gallic invasion interrupted the political strife, that 
burst forth more fiercely after the danger was past. The 
tribunes, Licinius Stolo and Sextius, in 376, renewed the 
demand for division of the consulship, and j)i'oposed an 
agrarian law limiting to 500 acres the amount of land Avhich 
a citizen could own. The crisis of the struggle had arrived. 
The same two tribunes were reelected for ten successive 
years. In vain did the senate persuade their colleagues to 
interpose their veto. Twice did they have recourse to the 
dictatorship. The dictator, Camillus, abdicated when threat- 
ened with a fine of 500 pounds. Against the tribunes the 
patricians invoked the sanctity of religion, for not a single 
plebeian was a priest. At last the patricians agreed that 
" instead of two custodians of the Sibylline books, ten shall 
be appointed, five of whom shall be plebeians." The year 
366 beheld for the first time a plebeian consul. Then the 
patricians created the prsetorship, an office exercising the 
judicial functions of the consuls. To this the plebeians be= 
came eligible in 337. The dictatorship Avas opened to them 
in 355, the censorship in 350, the proconsulship in 326, and 
the augurship in 302. Two additional laws assured political 
equality and founded that union at home and that strength 
abroad which enabled Rome to triumph over every obsta- 
cle. The one imposed the plebiscite equally on the two 
orders, and declared that both consuls might be plebeians. 
The other summarized and confirmed all the rights the 
plebeians had acquired. 



94 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 390-343. 



II 

THE CONQUEST OF ITALY 
(343 265) 

Capture of Rome by the Gauls (390). — The capture of 
Veil, a great Etruscan city, made Eorae preponderant in 
central Italy. The Gauls, established for two centuries in 
the valley of the Po, threatened to destroy the growing state 
at its centre. They besieged Clusium, which had refused 
them lands, and marched upon Rome. They defeated her 
armies on the banks of the Allia, and made their way to the 
foot of the Capitol, where the senate and the young men 
had shut themselves up. They maintained a close siege, 
until an invasion of the Veneti called them back to their 
own country, whereupon they consented to accept a ransom. 
As Camillus, on being appointed dictator, had destroyed 
some of their detachments, Roman vanity represented these 
petty successes as a complete victory. 

It took Rome nearly half a century to recover. Mean- 
while Camillus, Manlius Torquatus, and Valerius Corvus 
defeated several rebellious Latin tribes and their Gallic 
allies, and captured some of the Etrusean cities. They 
subjugated southern Etruria and most of Latium, and ap- 
proached the Samnite borders. Then burst out the Samnite 
war, or the war of Italian independence. All the nations 
of the peninsula entered the lists in turn, always commit- 
ting the fatal mistake of not attacking together. This war 
lasted seventy-eight years, desolated all central Italy, and 
placed the entire peninsula under the heel of Rome. 

The Samnite Wars. — The wealthy city of Capua, being 
threatened by the Samnites, submitted to the Romans, Avho 
defeated her adversaries, but the hostile attitude of the 
Latins prevented them from following up their successes. 
The Latins demanded full political equality with the 
Romans. On the senate's refusal a difficult war began. 
In deference to discipline, Manlius Torquatus condemned 





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B.C. 3i0-295.] THE CONQUEST OF ITALY 95 

to death his own sou wlio luid fought without orders, and 
Decius sacrificed himself to save the legions. Varying con- 
ditions, imposed on the Latin cities after the victory, 
assured their obedience. 

In 327 the Samnites, to expel the Eomans from Cam- 
pania, incited the city of Paloepolis to revolt. Defeated by 
Papirius Cursor and Fabius Maximus, who commanded the 
Eomans, the Samnites took their revenge at the Caudine 
Forks, where they surrounded the whole army, forced it to 
pass under the yoke, and to sign a humiliating treaty of 
peace. The senate repudiated the treaty and surrendered 
the consuls to the Samnites who were unwilling to receive 
them. Finally Publilius Philo penetrated victoriously into 
Samnium, while Papirius subdued Apulia on the farther 
side of the Samnite mountains. The senate endeavored to 
confine its formidable foes in the Apennines by a line of 
fortresses or military colonies. 

The northern peoples of the peninsula now came to the 
aid of the Samnifces. Fifty or sixty thousand Etruscans fell 
upon the Roman colony of Sutrium but were defeated by 
Fabius near Perusia. He systematically devastated Sam- 
nium till its exhausted tribes begged for an end of a war 
which had already lasted more than a generation. They 
retained their territory and the externals of independence, 
but agreed to recognize "the majesty of the Roman people." 
Circumstances were soon to show what the senate meant by 
this term. 

The Samnites with the Sabines, Etruscans, Umbrians 
and Gauls rose in general revolt. At Rome the tribunals 
were closed. All able-bodied citizens were enrolled, and 
an army was raised, at least 90,000 strong. The massacre 
of a whole legion near Camerinum opened to the Senones 
the passage of the Apennines. Should they effect their 
junction with the Umbrians and Etruscans, the consular 
army was doomed. Fabius by a diversion recalled the 
Etruscans to the defence of their homes, and then hastened 
to encounter the Gauls in the plains of Sentinum. The 
shock was terrible. Seven thousand Romans had already 
perished on the left wing which was commanded by Decius, 
when the consul sacrificed himself, imitating the example 
of his father. The barbarians retreated in disorder and 
returned to their country. The destruction of a Samnite 
legion and the defeat of Pontius Herennius, the victor of the 



96 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 290-275. 

Caudine Forks, finally wrung from this obstinate nation 
the confession of its defeat. A treaty, whose clauses are 
unknown, ranged them among the allies of Eome. To hold 
them in check Venusia was occupied by a powerful colony. 

The centre of Italy thus submitted to the Eoman suprem- 
acy or the Eoman alliance. In the north the Etruscans 
were still hostile and the Gauls had forgotten their defeat 
at Sentinum. In the south Samnite bands wandered among 
the mountains of Calabria. The Lucanians were uneasy, 
and the Greeks with apprehension beheld the approach of 
the Eoman rule. Tarentum especially manifested dissatis- 
faction. Still the union of so many peoples was impossible. 
The only real moment of serious danger was when, the 
Etruscans once destroyed a Eoman army. The senate re- 
plied by the utter extermination of the Senones. The Boii, 
another Gallic tribe, when endeavoring to avenge their 
brethren, were themselves crushed together with the Etrus- 
cans near Lake Vadimo (283). Northern like Central Italy 
then acknowledged the Eoman sway. 

Pyrrhus. — Tarentum alone held out in arms but realized 
her weakness too late. She summoned to her assistance 
Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. On arriving in that wealthy and 
luxurious city, Pyrrhus closed the baths and theatres and 
compelled the citizens to arm themselves. At the first 
battle near Heraclea the elephants, with which the Eomans 
were unacquainted, threw their ranks into disorder. They 
left 15,000 men on the field, but Pyrrhus had lost 13,000. 
"Another such victory," he exclaimed, "and I shall return 
to Epirus without an army." He sent his minister Cineas 
to Eome to propose peace. " Let Pyrrhus first leave Italy," 
replied the aged Appius, " and then we will see about treat- 
ing with him." Cineas was ordered to quit Eome that 
very day. "The senate," he said on his return, "seemed 
to me an assembly of kings." 

Pyrrhus tried to surprise the city, but all its citizens 
were soldiers. He could only gaze at the walls from a dis- 
tance. A second battle near Asculum, where a third Decius 
sacrificed himself, proved that he was only wearing out his 
forces in vain against this determined people. He crossed 
to Sicily to fight the Carthaginians who were besieging 
Syracuse. Though he raised the siege and drove the Afri- 
cans back to Lilybseum, he soon wearied of this expedition 
and returned to Italy. A defeat at Beneventum drove the 



B.C. 275-202.] THE CONQUEST OF ITALY 97 

royal adventurer back to Greece. Undertaking to conquer 
Macedon, he was proclaimed its king but perished miser- 
ably at the siege of Argos. Tarentum, thus abandoned, 
opened its gates (272), Greecia Magna, like northern and 
central Italy, was subdued. 

The Gauls. — The Cisalpine Gauls still inspired a legiti- 
mate fear. Keceiving the news that they had called for an 
army of their transalpine compatriots, the senate declared 
"emergency" and put on foot 700,000 soldiers, 500,000 of 
whom were furnished by the Italians. The victory of 
Telamon averted all danger and Marcellus slew their king 
with his own hand. Roman colonies, sent to the banks of 
the Po, overawed Cisalpine Gaul. The barbarians then 
implored the help of Hannibal but, satisfied to be delivered 
by his victories, did not themselves rise en masse to help 
him crush Rome. After the battle of Zama the senate 
again took measures against them. All the Boii emigrated, 
going in search of other habitations on the banks of the 
Danube, and thus delivered their rich country and the bar- 
riers of the Alps to the Romans. 



98 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 264-255. 



Ill 

THE PUNIC WARS 
(364-146) 

First Punic War (264-241). Conquest of Sicily. —Car- 
thage, a colony of Tyre, Ijacl extended lier sway from 
Niimidia to the frontiers of Cyrenai'ca, organized an im- 
mense caravan traffic in the interior of Africa and seized 
the control of the western Mediterranean. While Eome 
was contending with the Etruscans and the Italian Greeks, 
the Carthaginians had applauded her successes and had 
signed friendly treaties. The absolute victory of Eome 
filled them with consternation. With alarm they beheld 
a single power ruling over the beautiful country which was 
bathed by the Tuscan, the Adriatic and the Ionian seas. 

Sicily speedily became the cause of war between the two 
republics. ISTeither could abandon to a rival that splen- 
did island Avhich lies in the centre of the Mediterranean, 
touches Italy and looks out upon Africa. Carthage had 
been there long. Rome was invited thither by Mamertine 
mercenaries who had mastered Messina, which Hiero of 
Syracuse and the Carthaginians were besieging. The 
Romans delivered the city, defeated Hiero and imposed 
upon him a treaty to which he remained faithful for fifty 
years. Finally they expelled the Carthaginians from the 
interior of the island. The latter retained their seaports 
inasmuch as they were masters at sea. One fleet, con- 
structed by the Romans and armed with powerful grap- 
pling irons, defeated the Carthaginian vessels in the first 
encounter. Another naval battle gained by Regulus at 
Ecnomos decided Rome to make a descent upon Africa. 
In a few months Carthage found herself reduced to her 
walls. The Lacedoemonian Xanthippus changed the aspect 
of affairs. After weakening Regulus by successive skir- 
mishes, he defeated him in one great battle and destroyed 
his army. The war was again transferred to Sicily and 



B.C. 251-210.] THE PUNIC WARS 99 

languished there for years. The victory of Metellus. at 
Paiiormus revived the hopes of the Romans. Regulus was 
sent by Carthage to demand peace, wliich he exhorted the 
senate to refuse, and on his return is said to have been put 
to death with torture. But a great general had just arrived 
in Sicily, Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal. Fortifying 
himself at Eryx, he held the Romans in check for six 
years. Under these conditions the war might have dragged 
on many years longer, had not patriotism given to the 
senate a new fleet, that rendered the Romans supreme at 
sea. Hamilcar could not be provisioned. Carthage was 
compelled to end a ruinous war. She abandoned Sicily, 
restored all her prisoners without ransom and in the course 
of ten years paid 3200 Euboean talents. 

War of the Mercenaries against Carthage (241-238). — 
The soldiers of Carthage were not citizens but mercenaries. 
These mercenaries rebelled and for three years Cartha- 
ginian Africa was desolated by the Libyan war. Hamilcar 
delivered his country from this scourge, but fell under sus- 
picion and was exiled to Spain, whose conquest he under- 
took. In a few years the whole country as far as the Ebro 
was subdued by him and his son-in-law Hasdrubal. Rome 
in alarm stopped their progress by a treaty which stipulated 
the liberty of Saguntum, a Graeco-Latin city, south of the 
Ebro. 

Second Punic War (218-201). —Hannibal, the son of 
Hamilcar, wishing at any cost to renew the war against 
the Romans, attacked and destroyed this town without 
waiting for orders from Carthage. With a carefully 
equipped army he crossed the Pyrenees, the Rhone and 
the Alps. This audacious expedition consumed half of his 
forces but brought him into the midst of his allies, the 
Cisalpine Gauls. The consul Scipio was first beaten near 
the Ticinus in a cavalry engagement. A more serious 
affair on the banks of the Trebia drove the Romans from 
Cisalpine Gaul. In the following year they lost in Etruria, 
near Lake Thrasymenus, another sanguinary battle, and 
Hannibal was able to reach the centre and south of Italy. 
Thanks to the wise delay of the dictator Eabius several 
months passed without any fresh disaster. The awful bat- 
tle of Cannae, in 216, cost the legions 50,000 men. Capua 
with a part of southern Italy believed that the Romans were 
lost and renounced their allegiance. Rom.e was a marvel 



100 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 215-205. 

of constancy. She abandoned offensive warfare, fortified 
the strongholds, and tried by a line of intrenched places to 
hem in the general who thus far had been so fortunate in 
battle. Before this circle "was complete Hannibal quitted 
Campania. 

Since Carthage sent him no assistance, he sought to rouse 
Sardinia, Sicily and Macedon. He summoned from Spain 
his brother Hasdrubal with a new army of Spaniards over 
the route which he himself had traced. But Sardinia was 
checked, rebellious Syracuse was taken by Marcellus de- 
spite the machines of Archimedes, and Philip of Macedon, 
vanquished on the banks of the Aoiis and threatened through 
the wiles of K-ome by many Greek peoples, could not bring 
his phalanxes to assist Hannibal. 

While her enemy made these fruitless efforts, Kome 
armed twenty legions, pressed Hannibal harder every day 
in Apulia and Lucania and waged a fierce war against 
Capua, to make a terrible example of that city which had 
been the first to give the signal of defection. To save it 
Hannibal forced his way to the very walls of Eome, but as 
vainly as Pyrrhus. Capua fell and its entire population 
was sold into slavery. Only one hope was left to Hannibal. 
His brother Hasdrubal was bringing him 60,000 men. Met 
on the banks of the Metaurus by the two consuls, Hasdrubal 
perished there with his whole army. Nevertheless Han- 
nibal held out five years longer in the recesses of Brutium, 
until Scipio forced him from Italy by besieging Carthage. 

The two Scipios, Cneus and Cornelius, had been fighting 
for years in Spain. After brilliant successes they were 
overcome by superior forces and perished, Marcius, a 
young knight, saved the few survivors and confidence was 
already returning, when Publius Scipio, barely twenty-four 
years of age, the son of Cornelius, arrived to take command. 
At the very beginning he distinguished himself by a daring 
stroke in the surprise of Carthagena, the arsenal of the 
Carthaginians in the peninsula. Aided by the Spaniards, 
whom his gentleness had won over, he defeated Hasdrubal, 
but allowed him to escape. Then he crossed to Africa 
where he persuaded the Numidian king, Syphax, to sign 
an alliance with Eome. 

Being rewarded for his successes by the consulship, he 
resolved to attack Carthage itself. Despite the opposition 
of Fabius, whom such rashness appalled, he landed his 



B.C. 205-149.] THE PUNIC WARS 101 

army in Africa. Thougli the Numiclians on whom he 
counted failed him he routed all the armies sent against 
him and left Carthage, which he threatened with a siege, 
no other alternative than the recall of Hannibal. That 
unequalled general was himself defeated at his last battle 
at Zama. To his honor Scipio did not demand the extradi- 
tion of Hannibal but imposed the following conditions: 
Carthage might retain her laws and her African possessions, 
but must give up the prisoners and deserters, must surrender 
all her ships except ten, also all her elephants, and was to 
tame no more elephants in future; she must make no war, 
even in Africa, without the consent of Rome, and must 
raise no foreign mercenary troops; she must pay 10,000 
talents in fifty years, must indemnify Massinissa and 
recognize him as an ally. To Scipio were delivered 4000 
prisoners, a large number of fugitives whom he crucified 
or beheaded, and 500 ships which he burned on the open 
sea. Carthage was disarmed. That she might never re- 
cover, Scipio placed at her side a relentless enemy in 
Massinissa whom he recognized as king of Numidia. 

Returning to Eome Scipio received a magnificent triumph. 
He gained the name of Africanus and was offered the con- 
sulship and dictatorship for life. Thus Eome forgot her 
laws to honor her fortunate general. She offered Scipio 
what she was afterwards to allow Caesar to take. Zama was 
not only the end of the second Punic War but also the begin- 
ning of universal conquest. 

Third Punic War (149-146). Destruction of Carthage. — 
After Zama the existence of Carthage was only one long 
death agony. In 193 Massinissa robbed her of the rich 
territory of Emporia, a few years afterward of other large 
tracts of land, and finally of the whole province of Tysca 
with sixty -three cities. The Carthaginians complained to 
Rome, and the Romans promised justice; but Massinissa 
retained the disputed territory. Cato was sent as arbi- 
trator. He- was astonished and indignant at finding Car- 
thage wealthy, populous and prosperous. Returning Avith 
hatred in his heart, he henceforth closed his speeches with 
the invariable words, " Furthermore, I think Carthage must 
be destroyed " (Delencla est Carthago) . 

One day Carthage resisted an attack of Massinissa. The 
senate denounced this violation of the treaty. The two 
consuls immediately disembarked in Africa with 80,000 



102 HISTORY OF THE E03IANS [b.c. 146. 

men. They demanded the surrender of all the weapons 
and machines of war. Then, after receiving everything, 
they ordered the Carthaginians to abandon their city and 
settle ten miles inland. Grief and indignation inflamed 
the tumultuous people. Day and night they spent in mak- 
ing arms. Hasdrubal collected in his camp at Nepheris as 
many as 70,000 men. The Koman operations being unsuc- 
cessful, the consulate was given to Scipio ^Emilianus, the 
second Africanus, though he had asked only the sedileship. 
He restored discipline to the army and increased the courage 
of the soldiers. 

Carthage was built upon an isthmus. Cutting off this 
isthmus by a trench and wall he prevented sorties. To 
starve out the 700,000 inhabitants he closed the port by 
an immense dike. The Carthaginians cut a new passage 
through the rock toward the open sea. A fleet, built from 
the wreck of their houses, came near surprising the Roman 
galleys but was repulsed by Scipio. When the ravages of 
famine had weakened the defence, he forced a part of the 
walls and took the city. The citadel, Byrsa, still held out. 
Situated at the centre, it could be reached only through 
long, narrow streets, where the Carthaginians intrenched 
in their houses offered desperate resistance. It took six 
days and six nights for the army to reach the foot of the 
citadel. The garrison of 50,000 men surrendered on condi- 
tion of saving their lives. At their head was Hasdrubal. 
His wife, after taunting her husband from the top of the 
wall for his cowardice, cut the throats of her two children 
and threw herself into the flames. Scipio abandoned the 
smoking ruins to pillage. Commissioners sent by the 
senate reduced the Carthaginian territory to a Roman 
province called Africa (146). 



B.C. 229-183.] FOREIGN CONQUESTS OF ROME 103 



IV 

FOREIGN CONQUESTS OF ROME 
(339 129) 

Partial Conquest of Illyricum (229) and of Istria (221). — 
Between the first and second Punic wars, Rome had ob- 
tained a foothokl upon the Greek continent. The Adriatic 
was then infested by Illyrian pirates, and Teuta, the widow 
of their last king, had butchered two insolent Eoman envoys. 
The senate despatched 200 ships and 20,000 legionaries 
under the two consuls, who forced Teuta to pay tribute and 
to cede a large part of Illyricum. On occupying Istria the 
Romans became masters of one of the gates of Italy and 
also planted themselves at the north of Macedon which 
they threatened from Illyricum. 

The Conquerors of Asia Minor, Macedon and Greece. — 
The wars against Antiochus, Philip, Perseus and the Achae- 
ans have been already mentioned. Here we will merely 
make brief reference to the generals in command. 

Scipio Asiaticus, the conqueror of Antiochus at Magnesia, 
was the brother of Scipio Africanus, who accompanied him 
as his lieutenant. On their return to Pome, the tribunes 
accused the two brothers of accepting bribes to grant peace 
to the king of Syria. Scipio Africanus indignantly refused 
to answer, and quitted Rome. Scipio Asiaticus, degraded 
by Cato from the equestrian order, was condemned to pay 
the sum he was accused of receiving. His poverty proved 
his innocence. 

Titus Quintus Flaminius was the conqueror of Philip at 
Cynocephalse and the founder of the Roman policy in 
Greece. He remained there a long time after his command 
expired, so as to organize a Roman party in all the cities 
and to expel the enemies of the senate. Thus he thwarted 
the patriotic plans of Philopoemen and brought about the 
rebellion of Messene which cost that great citizen his 
life. He also demanded from Prusias, king of Bithynia, 



104 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 183-13:. 

the head of Hannibal, who had taken refuge in his states. 
The hero poisoned himself rather than fall into the hands 
of Rome. 

Paulus J^milius, who overthrew Perseus at Pydna, had 
won renown in the Lnsitanian and Ligurian wars. His tri- 
umph, adorned with the spoils of Macedon, was the richest 
thus far seen. But of his two sons, who were to ride with 
him in his chariot, one had just died and the other expired 
three days later. Paulus J^milius in his manly grief re- 
joiced that he was the one chosen to expiate the public 
prosperity. " My triumph," said he, " placed between the 
two funerals of my children, will satisfy the cruel sport of 
Fate. At the age of sixty years I find my hearth solitary, 
but the prosperity of the state consoles me." 

Mummius, the destroyer of Corinth and of the Achaean 
league, was famous for his roughness. From the pillage 
of that opulent city he kept nothing for himself, but he 
made the persons who were to transport to Eome the mas- 
terpieces of Grecian art promise to replace whatever was 
lost or injured on the way. 

Conquest of Spain (197-133). Viriathus. Numantia. — 
In Spain the war was longer and more difficult. The Span- 
iards, through hatred of Carthage, had supported the E-o- 
mans during the second Punic War, but Rome did not grant 
them liberty. They revolted and Rome had to begin a 
reconquest of the whole country. Sixty-four years were 
required for the task. They slew 9000 men in the army of 
the Roman Galba. He pretended to treat, offered them 
fertile lands and then massacred 30,000 of them. Such 
perfidy bore its natural fruit. A herdsman, Viriathus, 
escaped from the massacre and carried on a guerilla war in 
which the Romans lost their best soldiers. During five 
years he defeated all the generals sent against him. One 
day he surrounded the Consul Fabius in a narrow pass and 
forced him to sign a treaty, that declared '' There shall be 
peace between the Roman people and Viriathus." Cepio, 
the brother of Fabius, avenged him by fraud. He hired 
two officers of Viriathus to assassinate their chief. There- 
upon his followers surrendered and were removed by Cepio 
to the shores of the Mediterranean where they built Va- 
lencia. 

The Spanish war in the north toward Numantia was 
tedious and obstinate. Consul after consul was baffled or 



B.C. 133-30.] FOREIGN CONQUESTS OF ROME 105 

defeated until the general arrived who had conquered Car- 
thage. Gradually Scipio forced the Numantines back into 
their city, and surrounded it by four lines of intreneh- 
ments. Hard pressed by horrible famine, the inhabitants 
demanded battle but Scipio refused. Then they slew 
each other. Only fifty Numantines followed his triumphal 
chariot in Eome. Even then the northern mountaineers 
were not subdued. Spain was completely pacified only 
under Augustus. In 124 Metellus toot possession of the 
Balearic Islands after nearly exterminating their inhab- 
itants, and in 133 Attains ceded his kingdom of Pergamiis 
to the Romans. 

Thus thirty years before Christ, the city which we have 
seen rise upon the Palatine Hill ruled from the Spanish 
coast on the Western Ocean to the centre of Asia Minor. 
She possessed the three peninsulas of southern Europe, 
Spain, Italy and Greece. Between Italy and Greece, 
through the subjection of the Illyrians, she had secured 
herself a road around the Adriatic, and Marseilles lent her 
its vessels and its pilots from the Var to the Ebro. Thus 
her conquest of the ancient world was far advanced. Her 
success was due to three forces which in politics generate 
other forces also. These were an astute senate, where the 
traditions of government were long preserved, a sagacious 
people, amenable to the laws which they had made for 
themselves, and that organized discipline in the legions 
which formed the most perfect military engine the world 
had yet known. 



106 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 150. 



V 

FIRST CIVIL WARS. THE GRACCHI, MARIUS. SULLA 

(133-79) 

Results of Roman Conquests on Roman Manners and Con- 
stitution. — Yet the conquest of so many wealthy provinces 
had upon the manners and likewise upon the constitution 
of the Romans disastrous effects, which were already felt, 
and which on development were to destroy both the re- 
public and liberty. Ancient simplicity M^as gradually aban- 
doned. The descendant^ of Fabricius, Curius Dentatus and 
Regulus displayed a ruinous luxury. To replace the sums 
squandered in debauch or in empty display, they robbed 
their allies and the public treasury. The censors, guardians 
of the public manners, had already been forced to expel 
certain high-born personages from the senate. If the great 
became greedy, the people became venal. The middle class 
had disappeared, decimated by continuous wars, ruined by 
the decay of agriculture and by the competition of the 
slaves and free laborers. 

In place of that robust, proud, energetic population which 
had founded liberty and conquered Italy, there began to be 
seen in Rome only an idle, hungry crowd of beggars, con- 
tinually recruited by the emancipation of slaves, inheriting 
neither the ideas nor the blood of the ancient plebeians. 
" There are not two thousand property-holders," said one of 
the tribunes. Such then was the situation. Two or three 
hundred families possessed millions, and below, very far 
below, were 300,000 beggars. Nothing between these two 
extremes of an arrogant aristocracy and a feeble and servile 
mob. The Gracchi undertook two things : to restore respect 
for the laws among those nobles who no longer respected 
anything ; and to reawaken the sentiments of citizenship 
among men who were still called the sovereign people, but 
whom Scipio ..^milianus knowing their origin dubbed coun- 
terfeit sons of Italy. 



B.C. 133-119.] FIRST CIVIL WARS 107 

The Gracchi (133-121). — Tiberius Gracchus, elected trib- 
une in 133, began with the people. To regain their former 
virtues, they must resume their former habits. He wished to 
convert the poor into landowners, and to regenerate them 
by means of work. The republic owned immense territory, 
which had been encroached upon by the nobles. His project 
was to reclaim these appropriated lands and distribute them 
among the poor in small, inalienable lots. The reaffirmed 
Licinian law forbade any person to possess more than 500 
jugera of public lands. However, he promised an in- 
demnity for any outlay wdiich occupants had made upon 
the property restored by them. The nobles resisted stub- 
bornly. Tiberius, to break the veto of one of his colleagues, 
Octavius, caused him to be deposed. By thus trampling under 
foot the inviolable tribuneship, he provided a dangerous ex- 
ample, of which advantage w^as taken against himself. The 
nobles armed their slaves, attacked his partisans and slew 
him on the steps of the Capitol (133). 

In 123 Caius Gracchus was elected tribune, and openly 
resumed his brother's plans. He caused the agrarian law 
to be confirmed, established distributions of corn to the 
people, founded colonies for the poor citizens and dealt a 
fatal blow to the authority of the senate by taking from it 
the administration of justice and giving it to the knights. 
During two years he w^as all-powerful in the city. But the 
senate to ruin his credit caused, for every measure he pro- 
posed, some more popular measure to be brought forward 
by one of their creatures, and Caius was unable to obtain 
reelection for a third term. This check was a signal for 
which the Consul Opimius had been waiting. Caius suf- 
fered the fate of his brother, and 3000 of his partisans 
perished with him (121). The tribunes were dumb with 
terror during the next twelve years, and only recovered 
their voice at the scandals of the Numidian war, which 
brought into prominence Marius, the avenger of the Gracchi. 

Marius. Conquest of Numidia (118-104). — He was a 
rough, illiterate citizen of Arpinum, an intrepid soldier and 
good general. Scipio had noticed him at the siege of Nu- 
mantia. The support of Metellus, who had always protected 
his family, gave him the tribuneship in 119. At once he 
introduced a decree against intrigue. All the nobility 
denounced this audacity on the part of an unknown young 
man; but in the senate Marius threatened the consul with 



108 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 119-107. 

prison and summoned his viator to arrest Metellus. The 
populace applauded. A few days later, the tribune forbade 
a gratuitous distribution of grain. This assumption of 
the right to read a lesson to both parties turned every one 
against him. His zeal diminished with difficulty of pro- 
motion. He served obscurely as a praetor in K-ome and 
a propraetor in Spain. On his return, the peasant of 
Arpinum sealed his peace with the nobles by a great mar- 
riage. He wedded the patrician Julia, great-aunt of Caesar ; 
and Metellus, forgetting his conduct as tribune in consider- 
ation of his military talents, took him to ISTumidia. 

Micipsa, son of Massinissa and king of Numidia, had at 
his death (118) divided his states between his two sons and 
his nephew Jugurtha. The latter rid himself of one rival 
by assassination. Unable to surprise the other, he attacked 
him with open force in spite of Roman protection, and put 
him to death with torture, when famine had compelled his 
victim to open the gates of Cirtha, his last refuge (112). 
The senate had in vain sent two embassies to save him. 
Such audacity called for chastisement, but the first general 
sent against Jugurtha accepted bribes (111). A tribune 
summoned the king to Eome. Jugurtha had the hardihood 
to appear, but when one tribune ordered him to answer, 
another, whom he had bought, prohibited his replying. 

A comx3etitor for the Numidian throne was in the city. 
He had him killed (110). The senate ordered him to 
leave E-ome at once. '' City for sale ! " he cried, as he 
passed through the gates ; " thou only lackest a purchaser ! " 
A consul followed him to Africa. The legions, cut off by 
the Numidians, repeated the disgrace endured before ISTu- 
mantia and passed under the yoke. 

This war, which they had played with at first, soon 
became alarming, for the Cimbrians were threatening Italy 
with one more terrible. The honest but severe Metellus 
was sent to Numidia. He restored discipline and pursued 
his tireless enemy without truce or relaxation. He defeated 
him near Muthul (109), and took from him Vacca, his 
capital, Sicca, Cirtha and all the coast cities. When about 
to destroy the usurper, his lieutenant was appointed consul 
(107), and robbed him of the honor of finishing this war. 
The new general came near killing Jugurtha in battle with 
his own hand and made him fall back upon Mauritania. 
Jugurtha fled as a suppliant to his father-in-law Bocchus, 



B.C. 106-101.] FIRST CIVIL WARS 109 

who delivered him to the Romans. The captive monarch 
in chains (106) traversed his whole kingdom, followed 
Marius to Rome, and after the triumph was thrown into 
the Tullianum, a prison excavated in the Capitoline mount. 
" By the gods," he exclaimed with a laugh, " how cold your 
baths are." He died there six days after from hunger (104). 
Part of Numidia was added to the province of Africa. 

Invasion of the Cimbri and the Teutones (113-102). — 
This success arrived at a fortunate time to reassure Rome, 
then threatened by a great peril. Three hundred thou- 
sand Cimbri and Teutones, retreating before an overflow 
of the Baltic, had crossed the Danube, defeated a consul 
(113), and for three years had been devastating Noricum, 
Pannonia and Illyricum. When there was nothing left 
to take, the horde fought its way into Gaul and crushed 
five Roman armies (110-105). Italy was uncovered but, 
instead of crossing the Alps, tlie barbarians turned toward 
Spain, and Rome had time to recall Marius from Africa. 
In order to harden his soldiers, he subjected them to the 
severest labors. When a part of the horde reappeared, 
he refused for a long time to fight, that his army might 
become accustomed to seeing the barbarians close at hand. 
The action took place near Aix, and the Romans made a 
horrible carnage among the Teutones (102). 

Meanwhile the Cimbri, who had flanked the Alps, entered 
the peninsula through the valley of the Adige. Marius 
returned in all haste to the banks of the Po to the succor 
of his colleague Caculus. The barbarians were a^vaiting 
the arrival of the Teutones before fighting. They eVen 
asked Marius for lands for themselves and their brethren. 
"Do not trouble yourselves about your brethren," the con- 
sul replied; "they have the land which we have given 
them, and which they will keep forever." The Cimbri 
allowed him to choose the day and place of battle. At 
Vercellae, as at Aix, there was an immense massacre, Nev- 
ertheless more than 60,000 were made prisoners, but twice 
as many were massacred. The barbarian women, rather 
than be taken captive, slew their children and then killed 
themselves (101). 

Renewal of Civil Troubles. Saturninus (106-98). — Marius 
had been continued four successive years in the consulship 
in reward of his services. His ambition was not satisfied. 
On reentering Rome, he intrigued for the fasces of the 



110 HISTORY OF THE ROMAXS [b.c. 100-91. 

magistracy. The nobles tliouglit that the peasant of 
Arpinum had been honored enough. They put up Metelhis 
Numidicus, his personal enemy, against him and reduced 
him to buying votes. Marius could not pardon this insult, 
and had them attacked by Saturninus, a low demagogue. 
Saturninus aspired to the tribunate. A partisan of the 
nobles was elected but the demagogue slew him and seized 
his place. For the benefit of Marius' veterans he immedi- 
ately proposed an agrarian law, opposition to which caused 
the exile of Metellus. 

Soon afterwards Metellus was recalled. That he might 
not witness his triumphant return, Marius betook himself 
to Asia in the secret hope of bringing about a rupture be- 
tween Mithridates and the republic (98). He needed a 
war to restore his credit in the eyes of his fellow-citizens. 
" They look upon me," he said, " as a sword which rusts 
in peace." 

Sulla. The Italian Revolt (91-88). — The wars with Ju- 
gurtha and the Cimbri had made the fortune of the plebeian 
Marius. Three other wars made the fortune of the patrician 
Sulla, Avho has left a sanguinary name. Descendant of the 
illustrious Cornelian house, he was Marius' first qusestor 
in the Numidian war. Ambitious, brave, eloquent, zealous 
and energetic, Sulla soon became dear to the soldiers and 
their officers. Marius himself loved this young noble who 
did not rely upon his ancestors, and confided to him the 
dangerous mission of treating with Bocchus. It was into 
Sulla's hands that Jugurtha was betrayed. Marius associ- 
ated him with his triumph, and employed him again in the 
war Avith the Cimbri. A misunderstanding having arisen, 
Sulla joined the army of Catulus. Later on, he commanded 
in Asia. The Social War brought his talents into promi- 
nence. 

It was a period of general ferment. In the city, the 
people were rising against the nobles ; in Sicily, the slaves 
were rebelling against their masters. Her allies were turn- 
ing against Rome, whom they brought to the brink of the 
abyss. The Italians, after long sharing all the dangers of 
the Romans, wished to enjoy equal privileges and claimed 
the right of citizenship. Scipio ^Emilianus, Tiberius Grac- 
chus, Saturninus and finally the tribune Drusus encouraged 
them to hope for this title of citizen, which would have 
relieved them from the exactions and violence of the Roman 



B.C.91-S8.] FIRST CIVIL WARS 111 

magistrates. But the knights assassinated Drusns, and the 
allies, wearied by their long patience, resolved to obtain 
justice by force of arms. 

Eight peoples of central and southern Italy exchanged 
hostages and arranged a general rising. They were to- 
gether to form but one republic, organized after the pat- 
tern of Kome, with a senate of 500 members, two consuls 
and twelve praetors. Their capital was to be the stronghold 
Corfinium, which they called by the significant name of 
Italica. The Latins, the Etruscans, the Umbrians and 
the Uauls remained faithful to their allegiance. The sig- 
nal was given from Asculmn, where the consul Servilius 
was massacred together with all the Romans who were in 
the town; even the women were not spared (90). At first 
the allies had the advantage. Campania was invaded, one 
consul routed, another killed. Marius, who held a command, 
accomplished nothing worthy of his reputation. He con- 
tented himself with acting on the defensive, and soon he 
even withdrew, alleging his infirmities. His former relations 
with the Italians did not permit him to play a more active 
part. Sulla, who was hampered by nothing, was on the 
contrary energetic and deserved all the honor of this brief 
and terrible war. The prudence of the senate aided the 
skill of the generals. The Julian and Plautia-Papirian 
laws, which accorded the right of citizenship to the allies 
who had remained loyal, led to desertions, and at the end of 
the second year only the Samnites and Lucanians remained 
under arms. Erom the new citizens eight tribes were formed. 

In this way Sulla had gained the consulship and the com- 
mand of the war against Mithridates which Marius solicited 
in vain. This was the beginning of their rivalry and of the 
civil wars Avhich led to military rule. 

Proscriptions in Rome. Sulpicius and Cinna (88-84). — In 
order to annul the last-mentioned decree Marius made an 
agreement' with the tribune Sulpicius, and a riot forced the 
new consul to leave Eome (88) ; but he came back at the 
head of his troops. Marius in turn fled before a sentence 
which put a price on his lile. Dragged from the marshes 
of Minturnse, where he had taken refuge, and covered with 
mire, he was thrown into the city prison. A Cimbrian, sent 
to kill him, Avas terrified by his glance and words and dared 
not strike. The inhabitants, who cherished no anger against 
the friend of the Italians, employed as a pretext the reli- 



112 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 88-82. 

gious dread which he had inspired and furnished him the 
means to cross over into Africa. 

However in Rome Sulla had diminished by several laws the 
power of the tribunes of the people. Hardly had he departed 
for Asia, when the consul Cinna demanded that their dan- 
gerous power be restored. On being driven out of Rome 
he began a war against the senate. Marius hastened to 
return and join him. With an army of fugitive slaves and 
Italians they routed the troops of the senate, forced the gates 
of the city and put to death the friends of Sulla. For five 
days and five nights they slew without cessation, even on the 
altars of the gods. From Rome the proscription spread over 
Italy. They murdered in the cities and on the highways. 
It was forbidden under pain of death to bury the dead, who 
lay where they had fallen- until devoured by dogs and birds 
of prey. 

On January 1, 86, Marius and Cinna seized the consul- 
ship without election ; but debauch hastened the end of the 
former. Twelve days afterward he expired. He had set a 
price on Sulla's head. Valerius Flaccus undertook to get it, 
but was himself killed by one of his lieutenants. Cinna, 
thus left alone, continued himself in the consulship during 
the two following years, and fell under the blows of his 
soldiers. 

Victory of Sulla. His Proscriptions and Dictatorship (84- 
79). — At that moment Sulla was returning from Asia to 
avenge his friends and himself. His 40,000 veterans 
were so devoted to his person that they offered him 
their savings to fill his military chest. Unopposed he made 
his way into Campania (83), defeated one army, corrupted 
another and vanquished the son of Marius in the great 
battle of Sacriportus (82). This success opened the road to 
Rome. He arrived there too late to prevent fresh murders. 
The most illustrious senators had been massacred in the 
curia itself. Sulla rapidly passed through Rome on his way 
to fight the other consul, Carbo, in Etruria. One desperate 
battle which lasted all day had no result ; but desertions 
decided Carbo to flee to Africa. Sertorius, another leader 
of the popular party, had already set out for Spain ; only 
the young Marius, who was shut up in Praeneste, remained 
in Italy. The Italians tried by a bold stroke to save him. 
A Samnite chief, Pontus Telesinus, who had not laid down 
his arms since the Socinl Wnr. tried to surprise Rome and 



B.C. 82-81.] FIRST CIVIL WARS 113 

destroy it. Sulla had time to arrive. The battle near the 
Colline Gate lasted one whole day and night. The left wing 
commanded by Sulla was routed; but Crassus with the right 
wing dispersed the enemy. The field of battle was strewn 
with 50,000 corpses, half of which were Roman. 

The next day Sulla harangued the senate in the temple 
of Bellona. Suddenly cries of despair were heard and 
the senators became uneasy. " It is nothing," said he, 
"except the punishment of a few seditious persons," and 
he continued his discourse. Meanwhile 8000 Sanmite 
and Lucanian prisoners were being slain. When he re- 
turned from Prseneste, which had surrendered and all of 
whose population had been massacred, the butchery began 
in E/Ome. Every day a list of the outlawed was drawn up. 
From the first of December, 82, to the first of June, 81, 
during six long months, men could murder with impunity. 
There were assassinations afterward also, for Sulla's inti- 
mates sold the right to place a name on the fatal list. " One 
man's splendid villa, or the marble baths of another, or the 
magnificent gardens of a third caused him to perish." The 
property of the proscribed was confiscated, and sold at 
auction. The estate of Roscius was valued at six million 
sesterces, and Chrysogonus got it for two thousand. What 
was the number of the victims ? Appian inentions ninety 
senators, fifteen former consuls and 2600 knights. Valerius 
Maximus speaks of 4700 proscribed. " But who could 
reckon," says another, " all those who were sacrificed to pri- 
vate grudge ? " The proscription did not stop with the vic- 
tims. The sons and grandsons of the proscribed were 
declared forever ineligible to a public office. In Italy 
entire peoples were outlawed. The richest cities, Spoietum, 
Interamna, Prseneste, Terni, Florence, were, so to speak, sold 
at auction. In Samnium, Beneventum alone remained 
standing. 

• After having slain men by the sword, Sulla tried to destroy 
the popular party by laws. To issue these laws he had 
himself proclaimed dictator, and took all the measures which 
he thought calculated to assure the power in Rome to the 
aristocracy. To the senate he restored the right of decision 
and of preliminary discussion, or in other words the legis- 
lative veto. He deprived the tribunes of the right to pre- 
sent a rogation to the people. Their veto was restricted 
to civil affairs, and the tribune could hold no other office. 



114 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 76-72. 

Thus the people and the nobles moved backward four cen- 
turies ; the former to the obscurity of the time when they 
withdrew to Mons Sacer, the latter to the brilliancy and 
power of the early days of the republic. 

When Sulla had accomplished his purposes, he abdicated. 
This abdication (76) seemed a defiance of his enemies and 
an audacious confidence in his own fortunes. He lived a 
year longer in the retirement of his villa at Cumse. The 
epita]3h he had written for himself was veracious : '' No one 
has ever done more good to his friends, or more evil to his 
enemies." 

The Popular Party ruined by the Defeat of Sertorius (72). 
— The popular party was crushed at Rome. Sertorius tried 
to revive it in Spain. Driven out at first by one of Sulla's 
lieutenants before he had had time to organize anything, 
and then recalled by the Lusitanians, he gained over the 
Spaniards who thought that they were fighting for their 
independence. Successfully he resisted for ten years the 
best generals of the senate (82-72). He wore out Metellus, 
his first adversary, by a war of skirmishes and surprises, 
and defeated Pompey in many encounters. Unfortunately 
the clever leader was badly seconded. Whenever he was 
absent his lieutenants were worsted. He was assassinated 
in his tent by Perpenna, one of his officers, who, unable to 
carry on the war which his victim had conducted, fell into 
the hands of Pompey. The conqueror boasted that he had 
captured 800 cities and ended the' Civil Wars. The latter 
had in fact been averted but only for twenty years. 



B.C. 90 85.] FROM HULL A TO C.EiSAR 115 



VI 

FROM SULLA TO C^SAR. POMPEY AND CICERO 
(79-60) 

War against Mithridates under Sulla (90-84). — The shock 
which the empire had undergone from the popular turmoils 
in the times of the Gracchi and Marias, from the revolt 
of the slaves in Sicily, and the Social War in Italy, had 
affected the provinces. The provincials, horribly oppressed 
by the governors, wished to escape from that Roman domi- 
nation in which the Italians merely had demanded a share. 
The Western provincials had joined Sertorius. Those in 
the East followed Mithridates. 

Mithridates, king of Pontus, had subdued many Scythian 
nations beyond the Caucasus, also the kingdom of the Cim- 
merian Bosphorus, and in Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Phrygia 
and Bithynia. The senate, alarmed at this great power 
which was forming in the neighborhood of its provinces, 
ordered the prsetor of Asia to restore the Bithynian and 
Cappadocian kings to their thrones (90). Mithridates 
silently made immense preparations. When he learned 
that Italy was on fire, through the insurrection of the Sam- 
nite peoples, he deluged Asia with his armies. Such hatred 
had the greed of the Eoman publicans everywhere excited, 
that 80,000 Italians were assassinated in Asiatic cities 
at the order of Mithridates. Having subdued Asia, the 
king of Pontus invaded Greece and captured Athens (88). 
At any cost this conqueror who dared approach Italy 
must be stopped. Portunately the Social War was nearing 
its end. In the spring of 87 Sulla arrived in Greece with 
five legions, and began the siege of Athens which lasted 
ten months. The city was bathed in blood. The Pontic 
army encountered Sulla near Chseronea. His soldiers were 
appalled at the hosts of the enemy. Like Marius he 
exhausted them with work until they themselves demanded 
battle. Of the 120,000 Asiatics only 10,000 escaped. 

Sulla was still at Thebes, celebrating his victory, when he 



116 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 85-71. 

learned that the consul Valerius Flaccus was crossing the 
Adriatic with an army to rob him of the honor of termi- 
nating this war, and to execute the decree of proscription 
issued against him at Rome. At the same time Dorylaos, 
a general of Mithridates, arrived from Asia with 80,000 
men. Thus placed between two perils Sulla chose the 
more glorious. He marched against Dorylaos whom he 
met in Boeotia near Orchomenus. This time the enga]:e- 
ment was fierce ; Sulla was wounded but the Asiatic hordes 
were again dispersed. Thebes and three other cities of 
Boeotia met the fate of Athens. 

While he was winning this second victory, Flaccus had 
preceded him into Asia. Mithridates, threatened by two 
armies, secretly sued for peace from Sulla, intimating that 
he could obtain very mild terms from Fimbria, who had 
killed Flaccus and was making war on his own account. 
Mithridates vainly hoped to profit by the rivalry of the two 
chiefs. Finally the king humbly asked for an interview. 
It took place at Dardanus in the Troad. Mithridates made 
full submission, restored his conquests, delivered up the 
captives and deserters with 2000 talents and seventy 
galleys. Fimbria was then in Lydia. Sulla marched 
upon him, won over his army and reduced him to suicide 
(84). With the soldiers trained in this war he returned 
to Italy to overthrow the party of Marius. 

War against Mithridates under LucuUus and Pompey 
(74-63). — When six years later the king of Pontus heard 
of the dictator's death (78), he secretly incited the king of 
Armenia, Tigranes, to invade Cappadocia, and he himself 
prepared to enter the arena. All the barbaric tribes from 
the Caucasus to the Balkans furnished auxiliaries. Roman 
exiles drilled his troops and Sertorius sent him officers 
from Spain (74). 

Lucullus, proconsul of Cilicia, having received orders to 
oppose him, was marching on Pontus, when he learned that 
his colleague Cotta had been twice defeated and blocked in 
Macedon (74). Hastening to his help, he drove Mithridates 
into Cyzicus, where that prince would have been captured 
had not a subordinate officer been negligent. Then he pen- 
etrated into Pontus and took the stronghold of Amisus (72). 
In the following year he surrounded the enemy again. The 
king escaped by scattering his treasures along the road so 
as to delay pursuit, He found refuge with Tigranes, who 



B.C. 71-63.] FROM SULLA TO C^SAR 117 

was then the most powerful monarch of the East, being 
master of Armenia and Syria, conqueror of the Parthians, 
and bearing the title of King of kings. Mithridates in his 
former prosperity had refused to recognize his supremacy. 
Therefore he was coldly received, but when Lucullus de- 
manded that he should be surrendered, Tigranes in anger 
dismissed the envoy of the Koman general. The latter 
immediately began hostilities against his new enemy. He 
crossed the Tigris and with 11,000 foot aud a few horse 
marched to encounter 250,000 Armenians. He dispersed 
the immense army of Tigranes and captured his capital, 
Tigranocerta. 

Lucullus wintered in Gordyene, where he invited the king 
of the Parthians to join him. As that prince hesitated, he 
resolved to attack him, for he held in profound contempt 
those mobs which their princes mistook for armies. But 
his officers and soldiers, content with the immense booty 
they had already captured, refused, like those of Alexander, 
to follow him further. In 67 Ponipey came to replace 
him. Mithridates had collected another army, which was 
destroyed at the first encounter, and Tigranes, threatened 
by a treacherous and rebellious son who fled to the Romans, 
was forced to humble himself. Reassured in this direction, 
Pompey pursued Mithridates to the Caucasus and con- 
quered the Albanians and the Iberians. As the king still 
fled before him, he abandoned this fruitless pursuit. In 
the spring of 64, after having organized the Roman admin- 
istration in Pontus, he descended into Syria, reduced that 
country and Phoenicia to provinces and captured Jerusalem, 
where he reestablished Hyrcanus who promised an annual 
tribute. 

During these operations, Mithridates, who was reputed 
dead, reappeared with an army on the Bosphorus and forced 
his son Machares to kill himself. Then, despite his sixty 
years, this indomitable enemy wished to penetrate Thrace, 
attach the barbarians to his cause and descend upon Italy 
at the head of their innumerable hordes. His soldiers, 
alarmed at the magnitude of his plans, revolted at the insti- 
gation of his son Pharnaces. In order to escape being de- 
livered alive to the Romans, he had himself killed by a 
Gaul (63). Pompey had only to finish in Asia "the splen- 
did work of the Roman empire," distributing principalities 
and kingdoms to the friends of the senate. 



118 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 71-67. 

Revival of the Popular Party at Rome. The Gladiators 

(71). — After the death of Sulla and during the recent 
war against Mithridates, events of considerable importance 
had been taking place in Italy. The consul Lepidus had 
aroused a tempest by merely uttering the words : " Re- 
establishment of the authority of the tribuneship." The 
whole party, which Sulla thought he had drowned in blood, 
had at once raised its head. The governor of Cisalpine 
Gaul joined Lepidus. The senate and the patricians trem- 
bled when Pompey, still at the head of the army which he 
had himself raised against the followers of Marius, offered 
to hght the new chiefs of the people. He vanquished one 
at the Milvian Bridge close to the gates of Rome and the 
other in Cisalpine Gaul. We have seen his success in paci- 
fying Spain. 

Seventy-eight gladiators escaped from Capua, where they 
were being trained in great numbers, and seized upon a 
natural stronghold under the guidance of a Thracian slave 
Spartacus. There they repulsed troops sent against them. 
This success attracted to their ranks many herdsmen of the 
neighborhood. A second general was beaten. Spartacus 
wished to lead his army toward the Alps, cross those moun- 
tains and restore each slave to his native country. His 
men, greedy for booty and vengeance, refused to follow and 
dispersed all over Italy for pillage. Then two consuls 
were defeated. Crassus finally succeeded in shutting up the 
gladiators in the extreme end of Brutium, whither their 
chief had conducted them with the intention of leading them 
across into Sicily. Before the investment was complete 
Spartacus took advantage of a snowy night to escape. Dis- 
sension arose among his men and several detached corps 
were destroyed. Spartacus alone seemed invincible. The 
confidence which his successes inspired among the gladiators 
ended in his ruin. They forced him to fight a decisive 
battle, in which he succumbed after having displayed heroic 
courage (71). Shortly afterward Pompey arrived from 
Spain. He met several bands of these unfortunate men and 
cut them in pieces. Prom this paltry victory he attributed 
to himself the honor of having terminated this war. 

Pompey turns toward the People. War with the Pirates 
(67). — The nobles began to think that the vainglorious gen- 
eral had held commands enough and received him coldly. 
The people on the contrary to win him to their side greeted 



B.C. 67-^3.] FltOM SULLA TO C^SAR 119 

him with applause, so Ponipey incliaed toward the popular 
party. He proposed a law which restored to the tribunate 
its ancient prerogatives. This was the overthrow of Sulla's 
constitution. The grateful populace committed to him the 
charge of an easy but brilliant expedition against the pirates 
who infested the seas (67), and the command of the war 
against Mithridates whom Lucullus had already reduced. 
While accomplishing these enterprises, a memorable con- 
spiracy was on the point of overturning the republic itself. 

Cicero. Conspiracy of Catiline (63). — Cicero, like Marius, 
came from Arpinum. His fluent and flowery speech early 
revealed in him the ready orator. After a few successes 
at the bar he had the wisdom to continue his studies in 
Greece. He began his public career as a quaestor, and in 
the name of the Sicilians arraigned Verres, their former 
governor, the most shameless and greedy plunderer that 
Eome had ever seen. This trial, which had immense celeb- 
rity, raised to the highest pitch the renown of the prose- 
cutor, whose speeches against Verres we still admire at the 
present day. Cicero being a new man needed support. 
He sought that of Pompey and helped to confer extraordi- 
nary powers upon him. Eventually recognizing the goal 
whither that ambitious general was tending, he labored to 
form a party of honest men who assumed the mission of 
defending the republic. His consulship appears to have 
been the realization of this plan. 

The government was then menaced by a vast conspiracy. 
Catiline during the proscriptions had signalized himself 
among the most bloodthirsty. He had killed his brother- 
in-law, and murdered his wife and son to secure another 
woman in marriage. While propraetor in Africa he had 
committed terrible extortions. On his return he solicited 
the consulship, but a deputation from his province brought 
accusations against him, and the senate struck his name 
from the list of candidates. He had long been in league 
with the criminal classes at Rome. His plot to kill the 
consuls twice failed, and the enterprise was postponed to 
the year 63. Cicero was then consul, and realized how im- 
minent was the danger. Catiline had collected forces in 
several places. The veterans of Umbria, Etruria and Sam- 
nium were arming in his cause. The fleet at Ostia was 
apparently won over : Sittius in Africa promised to stir up 
that province and perhaps Spain also to rebellion. In Rome 



120 HISTORY OF THE BOMANS [b.c. G3. 

itself, Catiline believed he could count upon the consul An- 
tonius. One of the conspirators was a tribune elect, an- 
other a praetor. In a full senate Catiline had dared to say, 
" The Roman people is a robust body without a head : I will 
be that head." It soon became known that troops were 
mustering in Picenum and Apulia, and that Manlius, one 
of Sulla's former officers, was threatening Fsesulse with an 
army. The consuls were invested by the senate with dis- 
cretionary power, but Catiline remained in Rome. Cicero 
drove him out by a vehement oration, in which he disclosed 
the conspirator's plans. Having thus expelled the leader, 
who joined Manlius and thereby proclaimed himself a public 
enemy, he seized his accomplices, caused their condemna- 
tion by the senate and had them executed at once. This 
energy disheartened the rest of the conspirators. Antonius 
himself marched against Catiline, who was slain near Pis- 
toia, after having fought valiantly. 

On quitting office, when Cicero wished to harangue the 
people, a factious tribune ordered that he should confine 
himself to the customary oath of having done nothing con- 
trary to the laws. "I swear," exclaimed Cicero, "T swear 
that I have saved the republic ! " To this eloquent out- 
burst Cato and the senators responded by saluting him with 
the title, " Father of his country," which the whole people 
confirmed by their applause. 



B.C. 65-29.] CJESAR 121 



VII 

C^SAR 
(60-44) 

CaBsar, Leader of the Popular Party. His Consulship (60). 
— Caesar, of the illustrious Julian family which claimed de- 
scent from Venus through lulus, the son of Anchises, had 
braved Sulla when only seventeen years old. Nominated 
curule aedile in 65, he had won the people by magnificent 
games, and in spite of the senate had restored to the Capitol 
the trophies of his great-uncle Marius. The grateful people 
had nominated him sovereign pontiff. In 62 he already 
was in debt 850 talents. The wealthy Crassus, who owned 
a whole quarter in Rome, had to become his bondsman. 
Otherwise his debtors would not allow him to depart and 
take possession of his province of Farther Spain. 

When he returned in 60, he found Pompey and Crassus 
at variance with the senate; the first because it did not 
ratify his acts in Asia, the second because it left him no 
influence in the state. Csesar brought them together, and 
induced them to form a secret union which has been desig- 
nated as the triumvirate. All three swore to unite their 
resources and influence, and in every matter to act only in 
accordance with their common interest. Caesar reaped the 
first and the surest profits from the alliance. His two col- 
leagues agreed to support him for the consulship. In office 
he secured popularity by proposing and carrying an agrarian 
law in spite of the senate and of his colleague Bibulus. He 
won over the equestrian order by diminishing by a third 
the rents which the knights paid the state. He caused the 
acts of Pompey in Asia to be confirmed, and obtained for 
himself the government of Cisalpine Gaul and of Illyricum 
with three legions for a term of five years. In vain did 
Cato cry with prophetic voice : " You are arming tyranny 
and setting it in a fortress above your heads ! " The trem- 
bling senate added as an earnest of reconciliation a fourth 



122 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 59-52. 

legion and a third province, Transalpine Gaul, where war 
was imminent (59) . Before his departure Caesar took great 
care to have Clodius, one of his creatures, appointed tribune. 
Thus he could hold both the senate and Pompey in check 
during his absence. Clodius soon delivered him from two 
obnoxious persons, Cato and Cicero, accusing the great 
orator of illegally putting to death Catiline's accomplices. 
Clodius secured against him a sentence of exile to a dis- 
tance of 400 miles from Kome. Cato was ordered to reduce 
Cyprus to a province. 

The Gallic War. Victories over the Helvetii, Ariovistus, and 
the Belgae (58-57). — Since 125 the Eomans had held Nar- 
bonensis, a province in Gaul, and were on friendly terms 
with the ^dui, a tribe in central Gaul. Their neighbors, 
the Sequani, were attacked by Ariovistus, a German chief. 
He had crossed the Rhine with 120,000 Suevi, overthrown 
the Sequani and ^dui, and harshly oppressed eastern Gaul. 
This was the beginning of the Germanic invasion. Another 
fact directed Caesar's attention to this quarter. The Hel- 
vetii, constantly attacked by the Suevi, wished to abandon 
their mountains and seek on the shores of the ocean a milder 
climate and an easier existence. Caesar resolved to oppose 
these changes as unfavorable to Roman supremacy. The 
Helvetii having crossed the Jura in spite of his prohibition, 
he exterminated many of them on the banks of the Saone, 
and forced the rest to return to their mountains. Then in 
a sanguinary encounter he drove Ariovistus back beyond 
the Rhine (58). Gaul was delivered. As the legions estab- 
lished their camps at the very frontiers of Belgium, the 
Belgic tribes grew alarmed at seeing the Romans so near 
them. They formed a vast league, which was broken by 
the treachery of the Remi, and the tribes, attacked sepa- 
rately, were forced to submit. 

Submission of Armoricum and Aquitaine. Expeditions to 
Britain and beyond the Rhine (56-53) . — The third cam- 
paign subdued Armoricum and the Aquitani. In the fourth 
and fifth, two expeditions beyond the Rhine deprived the 
barbarians of all desire of crossing that river or of aiding 
the Gauls in their resistance. Two descents upon Britain 
cut off Gaul from that island, the centre of the druidic 
religion. The whole of Gaul was apparently resigned to 
the yoke. 

General Insurrection. Vercingetorix. — Nevertheless a 



B.C. 53-52.] CJESAR 123 

general insurrection was preparing from the Garonne to 
the Seine. A young chieftain of the Arverni, Vercin- 
getorix, directed the movement (52). The legions were 
dispersed but Caesar acted with great celerity and skill. 
With his lieutenant, Labienus, who had won a battle near 
Paris, Caesar attacked 200,000 Gauls, who were trying to 
cut him off from the Alps. He gained a decisive victory, 
crowded his enemy into Alesia, and surrounded it with 
formidable earthworks. Vercingetorix was forced to sur- 
render. 

Defeat of Crassus by the Parthians. — While Caesar was 
conquering Gaul by his activity and genius, one of the 
triumvirs, Crassus, undertook an expedition against the 
Parthians. After pillaging the temples of Syria and Jeru- 
salem, he crossed the Euphrates with seven legions, plunged 
into the immense plains of Mesopotamia and soon encoun- 
tered the innumerable cavalry of the Parthians. When these 
horsemen hurled themselves upon the legions, the Koman 
arms and courage proved of no avail against the tactics of 
the enemy. When they advanced, the Parthians fled ; when 
they halted, the squadrons hovered around the stationary 
host and slew them with arrows from a distance. Dis- 
heartened, the legions retreated to Carrhae, leaving 4000 
wounded. The very next day the Koman army was over- 
taken by the Parthians, and the terrified soldiers forced 
Crassus to accept an interview with the surena, or Par- 
thian general-in-chief. The interview was an ambuscade. 
Crassus and his escort were killed. Only a few feeble 
remnants recrossed the Euphrates (53). 

Civil War between Caesar and Pompey (49-48). — Between 
the two surviving triumvirs peace could not long endure. 
While Crassus was fighting in Syria and Caesar in Gaul, 
Pompey had remained in Rome. Daily insulted by Clodius, 
he soon recalled Cicero, the personal enemy of that dema- 
gogue, and then stirred up the tribune Milo, who opposed 
Clodius with a band of gladiators and finally killed him. 
The senate won Pompey to its side by causing his election 
as sole consul with absolute power (52). This was mon- 
archy in disguise; but the senate desired a general and an 
army to oppose Caesar, whose glory daily became more 
menacing. Cato approved these concessions. Though 
Pompey was a usurper, his usurpation was acquired by 
legal means; but how was he to defend himself against his 



124 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 51-47. 

former associate in the triumvirate? Then began attacks 
upon Caesar, for the purpose of taking away his command. 
In vain did the tribune Curio declare that Pompey must 
abdicate to save liberty, if Caesar were dispossessed. On 
January 1, 49, a decree of the senate declared Caesar a pub- 
lic enemy if by a certain day he did not abandon his troops 
and his provinces. Two tribunes who opposed were threat- 
ened by the followers of Pompey and fled to Caesar's camp. 
He no longer hesitated, crossed the Eubicon, the boundary 
of his government, and in sixty days drove from Italy Pom- 
pey and the senators who wished to follow him (49). Then 
he attacked the Pompeian party in Spain and forced it to 
lay down its arms. On his way back he captured Marseilles 
and returned to Rome where the people had conferred upon 
him the title of dictator. 

Pompey had retired toward Dyrrachium in Epirus and 
thence called to him all the forces of the East. In January, 
48, Caesar crossed the Adriatic, and although his army was 
greatly inferior in numbers tried to surround his adversary. 
Being repulsed in an attack against positions which were 
too strong, and in need of food, he marched to Thessaly 
whither Pompey imprudently followed. The battle of 
Pharsalia, the defeat and flight of Pompey to Egypt, where 
he was treacherously murdered at the moment of his disem- 
barkation in a supposed friendly land, left Caesar without 
a rival. 

War of Alexandria. Caesar Dictator (48-44). — With his 
usual activity, he had followed on the heels of Pompey and 
had arrived in Egypt a few days after him. The ministers 
of the young Ptolemy expected a reward for their treachery. 
He showed only horror. Eascinated by the charms of Cleo- 
patra, the sister of the king, he wished her to reign jointly 
with her brother. Then the ministers stirred up the im- 
mense population of Alexandria, and the victor of Pharsalia 
beheld himself with 7000 legionaries besieged for seven 
months in the palace of the Lagidae. Reinforcements came 
to him from Asia. He assumed the offensive and defeated 
the royal army. The fleeing king was drowned in the 
Nile, and Cleopatra remained sole mistress of Egypt (48). 
Caesar returned to Rome by way of Asia, where he routed 
Pharnaces. Veni, vidi, vici, he wrote to the senate (47). 
Another war awaited him. The survivors of Pharsalia, 
who had taken refuge in Africa, now formed a formidable 



B.C. 46-44.] C^SAR 125 

army supported by Jubca, king of the Nimiidians. He con- 
quered it at Thapsus and captured Utica, where Cato had 
just committed suicide rather than survive liberty (46). 

The sons of Pompey roused Spain to revolt in the fol- 
lowing year. This last was a difficult struggle. At Munda 
Caesar was obliged to fight for his life, but his enemies were 
crushed. All the honors which flattery could invent were 
bestowed upon the conqueror. He was declared almost a 
god. All the prerogatives of authority were surrendered 
to him. However no man ever made a nobler use of his 
power. There were no proscriptions. All injuries were 
forgotten. Discipline was sternly maintained in the army. 
The people, while surfeited with festivals and games, were 
firmly ruled and Italian agriculture was encouraged as the 
Gracchi had wished that it should be. No new names were 
invented for this new authority. The senate, the comitia, 
the magistracies, existed as in the past. Only Csesar con- 
centrated in himself all i^ublic action by uniting in his own 
hands all the offices of the republic. As dictator for life 
and consul for live years, he had the executive power with 
the right to draw upon the treasury; as imperator, the 
military power; as tribune, the veto on the legislative 
power. Chief of the senate, he directed the debates of that 
assembly; prefect of customs, he decided them according 
to his pleasure; grand pontiff, he made religion speak in 
accordance with his interests and watched over his minis- 
ters. The finances, the army, religion, the executive power, 
a part of the judicial p)Ower, and indirectly nearly all the 
legislative power were thus at his discretion. 

Caesar had conceived grand projects. He wished to crush 
the Daci and Getae, avenge Crassus, penetrate even to the 
Indus, and, returning through conquered Scythia and Ger- 
many, in the Babylon of the West place on his brow the 
crown of Alexander. Then, master of the world, he would 
cut the Corinthian isthmus, drain the Pontine marshes, 
pierce Lake Fucinus and throw across the Apennines a 
great road from the Adriatic to the Tuscan sea. Then he 
would extend the rights of citizenship in order to cement 
the unity of the empire ; would collect in one code the laws, 
the decrees of the senate, the plebiscites and the edicts ; and 
would gather in a public library all the products of human 
thought. 

But for many months a conspiracy had been forming. 



^2Q HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c.44. 

Cassius was its head. He carried with him Brutus, nephew 
and son-in-law of Cato, a man of many virtues but egotistic 
and a blind partisan of former institutions. On the ides ot 
March (March 15), 44, the conspirators assassinated Osesar 
in the senate house. 



B.C. 44-43.] THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE 127 



VIII 

THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE 

Octavius. — With Caesar dead the conspirators supposed 
liberty would return unaided; bat Antony, then consul, 
stirred up the people against them at the dictator's funeral 
and drove them from the city. Caesar had left no son, only 
a nephew, Octavius, whom he had adopted. When this 
young man, eighteen years of age, came to Rome, Antony, 
expecting to inherit the power of his former chief, dis- 
dained the friendless aspirant; but the name of Caesar ral- 
lied round Octavius all the veterans. As he agreed to 
discharge the legacy bequeathed by Caesar to the people 
and the soldiers, he created for himself by that declaration 
alone a numerous faction. The senate, where Cicero tried 
once more to rescue liberty from the furious hands which 
sought to stifle it, needed an army wherewith to oppose 
Antony. This army Octavius alone could give. Cicero 
flattered tlie youth, whom he hoped to lead, and caused 
some empty honors to be conferred upon him. He was sent 
with two consuls to the relief of Decimus Brutus, one of 
Caesar's murderers, whom Antony was besieging in Modena. 
The campaign was short and sanguinary (43). Antony 
was defeated, but the two consuls perished, and Octavius 
demanded for himself one of the vacant offices. The senate, 
which thought it needed him no longer, disdainfully rejected 
his demand. He immediately led eight legions to the very 
gates of Rome, made his entry amid the plaudits of the 
people, who declared him consul, had his election ratified, 
and distributed to his troops at the expense of the public 
treasury the promised rewards. 

Second Triumvirate. Proscription. Battle of Philippi. — 
He could now treat with Antony without fear of suffering 
eclipse. He was consul. He had an army. He was mas- 
ter of Rome, and around him all those Caesarians had ral- 
lied whom the violence of his rival had estranged. The 
negotiations made rapid progress. Antony, Lepidus, the 



128 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.o. 43-42. 

former general of Caesar's cavalry, and Octavius met near 
Bologna on an island of the little river Reno. There they 
spent three days in forming the plan of the second trium- 
virate. A new magistracy was created under the title of 
" triumviri reipublicse constituendse. " Lepidus, Antony and 
Octavius conferred upon themselves the consular power for 
five years, with the right to dispose for the same period of 
all the offices. Their decrees were to have the force of law, 
and each reserved to himself two provinces on the outskirts 
of Italy: Lepidus, Narbonensis and Spain; Antony, the two 
Gauls; Octavius, Africa, Sicily and Sardinia. To make 
sure of their soldiers, the triumvirs promised them 5000 
drachmse apiece and the lands of eighteen of the finest 
cities in Italy. 

Before returning to Rome they issued an order to put to 
death seventeen of the most prominent persons of the state. 
Cicero was among the number. On their arrival they pro- 
mulgated the following edict : " Let no one conceal any of 
those whose names are hereinafter given. Whoever shall 
assist a proscribed person to escape shall himself be pro- 
scribed. Let the heads be brought to us. In recompense, 
the freeman shall receive 25,000 drachmae, the slave 10,000 
together with free liberty and citizenship." Then followed 
a list of 130 names. A second list of 150 appeared almost 
immediately afterward, soon followed by others. At the 
head of the first stood the names of a brother of Lepidus, 
of an uncle of Antony and of a tutor of Octavius. Each 
leader had given up a kinsman, thus purchasing the privi- 
lege of not being hampered in his vengeance. The ill- 
omened days of Marius and Sulla began anew and again 
were seen hideous trophies of bleeding heads. One was 
presented to Antony: "I do not recognize it," said he; 
"carry it to my wife." In fact it was that of a wealthy 
private person who had once refused to sell Fulvia one of 
his villas. Many escaped on the ships of Sextus Pompey, 
who had just seized Sicily, or made their way to Africa, 
Syria and Macedon. Cicero, whom Octavius had aban- 
doned to the rancor of his colleague, was less fortunate. 
He was killed in his villa at Gaeta. His head and hand 
were cut off and brought to Antony while he was at table. 
At the spectacle he manifested a ferocious joy. Fulvia, 
taking in her hands that bleeding head, with a bodkin 
pierced the tongue which had pursued her with so many 



B.C. 42-41.] THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE 129 

deserved sarcasms. The pitiable remains were then attached 
to the rostrum. 

On leaving Italy Brutus had gone to Athens. The gov- 
ernor of Macedon resigned his command to him. From the 
Adriatic to Thrace in a few days everything obeyed the 
republican general. Cassius for his part had seduced 
the eastern legions. 

■ To raise money, he made the provinces pay in one instal- 
ment the taxes of the next ten years. The republican army, 
loaded down with the plunder of Asia, reentered Europe 
and advanced as far as Philippi in Macedon to meet the 
triumvirs. Antony posted himself opposite Cassius; Oc- 
tavius opposed Brutus. The two armies were nearly equal 
in numbers, but the republicans had a formidable fleet, 
which cut off communication by sea. Thus Antony, threat- 
ened with famine, was anxious for battle, but Cassius for 
the contrary reason wished to defer it. Brutus, eager to 
end the civil war, desired action. Octavius, who was ill, 
had been removed from his camp when Messala, attacking 
with impetuosity, penetrated his lines. Brutus thought 
the victory was won. But on the other wing Antony had 
dispersed his antagonists, and Cassius regarding his party 
as ruined had committed suicide. 

Twenty days after this action, another took place, in 
which the troops of Brutus were surrounded and put to 
rout. Their leader, who escaped with difficulty, halted on 
an eminence to accomplish what he called his deliverance. 
He threw himself on his sword, exclaiming: "Virtue, thou 
art only a word ! " Antony showed some mildness toward 
the captives, but Octavius was pitiless. The republican 
fleet proceeded to join Sextus Pompey (42). 

Antony in the East. The Perusian War. Treaty of Mise- 
num (39). — The two conquerors made a new partition of 
the world between them, regardless of Lepidus, who was 
supposed to have an understanding with Pompey. The 
share of the leaders having been arranged, it remained to 
settle that of the soldiers. Octavius, ill as he was, under- 
took the apparently difficult task of distributing lands in 
Italy to the veterans. Antony was to go to Asia and obtain 
the 200, 000 talents required. He traversed Greece and Asia 
in a continual festival, horribly oppressing the people to 
provide the means for extravagance. In Asia he demanded 
the imposts for the next ten years on the spot. For a 



130 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 41-35. 

savory dish he rewarded his cook with the house of a 
wealthy citizen of Magnesia. Cleopatra had furnished 
money and troops to Cassius. Antony demanded an ex- 
planation of her conduct. To Tarsus in Cilicia, where he 
was, she came in person hoping to conquer him as she had 
conquered Caesar by her charms. 

Antony was an easy prey. When he beheld this elegar.^ 
and accomplished Avoman, who spoke six languages, holding 
her own with him in his orgies, he forgot Rome and Fulvia 
his wife to follow her, tamed and docile, to Alexandria 
(41). While he was wasting precious time in shameful de- 
bauchery, Octavius in Italy was attempting the impossible 
task of satisfactorily dividing the lands. The dispossessed 
proprietors, who unlike Virgil could not buy back their 
property with fine verses, hastened to Rome, lamented their 
misfortunes and excited the people to revolt. The brother 
of Antony thought this an opportunity to overthrow Oc- 
tavius and collected seventeen legions, with which he 
seized Rome, announcing the speedy restoration of the re- 
public. But Agrippa, the best officer of Octavius, drove 
him from the city and forced him to take refuge in Perusia, 
where famine compelled his surrender (40). Fulvia fled to 
Greece with all Antony's friends and Octavius remained 
sole master of Italy. The news roused the triumvir from 
his unmanly torpor but his soldiers ordered peace, and the 
two adversaries made a new partition, which gave Antony 
the east as far as the Adriatic with the obligation to fight 
the Parthians, and the west to Octavius with the war 
against Sextus Pompey. The latter however a few days 
later signed the treaty of Misenum. He was to retain 
Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and Achsea. Lepidus received 
Africa (39). 

Wise Administration of Octavius. Expedition of Antony 
against the Parthians. — The peace of Misenum was only a 
truce. Octavius could not consent to leave the provisioning 
of Rome and of his legions at the mercy of Pompey. The 
struggle broke out in 38. The victory of Naulochus assured 
the success of Octavius (36). Sextus, who had taken refuge 
in Asia, was put to death in Miletus by one of Antony's 
officers (35). Octavius rid himself at the same time of 
Lepidus, whom he banished to Circeii where he lived some 
twenty-three years longer. When Octavius returned to 
Rome the people, who beheld prosperity suddenly revived, 



B.C. 37-32.] THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE 131 

accompanied him to the Capitol and crowned him with 
flowers. They wished to lavish honors upon him. Already 
beginning his role of self-abnegation and modesty, he sup- 
pressed several taxes, and declared his intention of abdi- 
cating as soon as Antony terminated the war against the 
Parthians. Meanwhile his energetic administration rees- 
tablished order in the peninsula. Bandits were hunted 
down and fugitive slaves restored to their masters or put 
to death when not reclaimed. In less than a year security 
reigned at the capital and in the country. Kome was gov- 
erned. 

In 37 Antony came to Tarentum to renew the triumvirate 
for five years. Excited by the victories of his lieutenants, 
he decided to assume in person the command of the Par- 
thian War. Scarcely had he touched Asiatic soil when his 
passion for Cleopatra revived more madly than ever. He 
had her come to Laodicea, recognized the children she had 
borne him, and added to her dominions almost the whole 
coast from the Nile as far as Mount Taurus. Though those 
countries were for the most part Roman provinces, the 
caprice of the all-powerful triumvir had more influence 
than senate or laws. 

At last Antony decided to march against the Parthians 
with 60,000 men, 10,000 horsemen and 30,000 auxiliaries. 
He marched through Armenia, whose king Artavasdes 
was his ally, and penetrated as far as Phraata near the 
Caspian Sea; but he had not brought his siege machines, 
and was obliged to retreat. After twenty-seven days' march, 
during which they fought eighteen battles, the Romans 
reached the Araxes, the frontier of Armenia. Their road 
from Phraata was marked by the corpses of 24,000 legion- 
aries. Fortune offered Antony a last opportunity to re- 
pair his reverses. A quarrel had arisen between the king 
of the Parthians and the king of the Medes as to division of 
the spoils. The angry Mede intimated that he was ready 
to join the Romans. Cleopatra prevented Antony from 
replying to this appeal, and carried him off in her train to 
Alexandria. 

While Antony was disgracing himself in the East, Oc- 
tavius was giving to Italy that repose for which she hun- 
gered. He conquered the pirates of the Adriatic and the 
turbulent tribes, the Liburni and Dalmati, at the north. 
At the siege of Metulum, he himself mounted to the assault 



132 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 32-30. 

and received three wounds. He penetrated as far as the 
Sava, and subdued a part of Pannonia. Thus, of the two 
triumvirs, the one was bestowing Roman countries upon a 
barbarous queen, and the other was increasing the territory 
of the empire. However Antony complained and demanded 
a share in the spoils of Sextus and Lepidus. Octavius re- 
plied with bitter criticisms of his conduct in the East, and 
read to the senate the will of Antony, which bequeathed to 
Cleopatra and her children the greater part of the provinces 
which he had in his power. Octavius wished by this means 
to strengthen the rumor that Antony, should he become 
the master, would make a gift to Cleopatra of Rome itself. 
A decree of the senate declared war against the queen of 
Egypt. 

Actium. Death of Antony and Reduction of Egypt to a 
Province. — Antony had collected 100,000 foot, 12,000 horse 
and 500 great ships of war. Octavius had only 80,000 
foot, 12,000 horse and 250 vessels of inferior size. His 
galleys however were lighter and swifter and were manned 
by the veteran sailors and soldiers who had defeated Sextus 
Pompey. The battle was fought oft" Actium on the coast of 
Acarnania (31). Cleopatra took to flight in the middle of 
the action with sixty Egyptian ships, and Antony cowardly 
followed her. The abandoned fleet surrendered. The 
army for seven days resisted all solicitation. This time 
Octavius did not stain his victory by acts of revenge. No 
suppliant for life was refused. The victor, recalled to Italy 
to quiet troubles there, could not pursue his rival until the 
following year. Antony tried to defend Alexandria but 
was betrayed by Cleopatra and committed suicide. The 
queen herself, having vainly sought to move the conqueror, 
had herself stung by an asp. Octavius reduced Egypt to a 
Roman province (30). 

Rome belonged to a master. Two centuries of war, pil- 
lage and conquests had destroyed equality in the city of 
Fabricius, had taught insolence to the nobles, servility to 
men of low degree, and replaced the citizen army by a mer- 
cenary rabble, who cared nothing for the state, its laws or 
liberty, and recognized only the leader whose hand offered 
them booty and gold. The establishment of the empire was 
certainly a military revolution. But, since Rome had not 
been able to halt at the popular reforms of the Gracchi or 
the aristocratic reform of Sulla, this revolution had be- 



B.C. 30.] THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE 133 

come inevitable. It was impossible tliat the institu- 
tions, adequate for a city of a few thousand inhabitants, 
should be adequate for a society of 80,000,000 souls; that 
the city, now become the capital of the world, should con- 
tinue to be disturbed by sterile and bloody rivalries; that 
the kings, the allied nations and the provinces should re- 
main the prey of the 200 families which composed the 
Roman aristocracy. 

But in place of the citizens who were despoiled and 
who merited their fate, could men be formed, capable by 
their voluntary discipline and political intelligence of win- 
ning new rights, higher perhaps than those which they had 
lost? 

If liberty was destined not to return, could any one under- 
stand how to organize those multitudes, ignorant henceforth 
of any will save that of the prince, into a vigorous body 
capable of a long existence? Since there is to be an empire 
instead of a city, shall we see a great nation take the place 
of the oligarchy which had just been overthrown, and of 
the populace which regarded the victory of Caesar and of 
Octavius as its triumph? The history of Augustus and 
of his successors will be the answer. 



134 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 30. 



IX 

AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 

(B.C. 31-A.D. 68) 

Constitution of the Imperial Power (30-12). — Antony was 

dead and Egypt attached to the imperial domain. Octa- 
vius returned to Asia Minor. There he spent the winter 
in regulating the affairs of the East, while Msecenas and 
Agrippa kept watch for him in Eome. Their task was 
easy, for the only sounds were the adulatory decrees of the 
senate. When at last he returned to his capital after his 
triumph, he distributed to the soldiers 1000 sesterces apiece, 
to the citizens four hundred, and shut the temple of Janus 
to announce the new era of peace and order that had begun. 

As consul he was legally to retain for six years almost 
the entire executive power. Yet above all he had need of 
the army. In order to remain at its head he caused the 
senate to bestow upon him the title of imperator with the 
supreme command of all the military forces. The generals 
were henceforth only his lieutenants, and the soldiers took 
the oath of loyalty to him. 

He preserved the senate and resolved to make of it the 
pivot of his government. First however with Agrippa as 
his colleague he was proclaimed censor; this enabled him 
to expel from the senatorial body unworthy members or 
opponents of the new order. AVhen the former censors 
completed the census, the man whose name they had placed 
at the head of the list, generally one of themselves, was 
called chief of the senate. This purely honorary post Octa- 
vius retained during the remainder of his life. Agrippa 
had given his colleague this republican title, and thus 
placed the deliberations of the senate under his direction ; 
for, in accordance with ancient usage, the chief always 
expressed his opinion first and this first opinion exercised 
an influence now destined to be decisive. 

The senators had placed nearly all the provinces under 



B.C. 30-12.] AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 136 

his authority by investing him with the proconsulship. 
Octavius wished that they shoukl at least share this office 
with him. He left them the tranquil and prosi^erous regions 
of the interior, and took for himself those still in turmoil 
or threatened by the barbarians, and where in consequence the 
troops were stationed. In the fervor of its gratitude, the 
senate called him Augustus, a title which had been applied 
only to the gods. It is by this title he is commonly known. 
Three years later it bestowed upon him the tribuneship for 
life or inviolability in office. In the year 19 he was de- 
creed consul for life. He had formerly accepted the com- 
mand of the provinces and the armies for ten years only. 
In the year 18 he caused his powers to be renewed, each 
time protesting against the violence done his preferences in 
the name of the public interest. Finally he caused him- 
self to be named sovereign pontiff. There was nothing 
else left worth the taking (12). Thus centring in himself 
every high office, conferred in accordance with all the 
forms of law, he was absolute master of Rome and the 
empire. His reign of forty-four years was emploj^ed in 
tranquil organization of the monarchy. The emasculated 
senate still existed as the council of state. He even in- 
creased its attributes by intrusting to it the decision in all 
political cases and important suits. The people also retained 
the form of their assemblies, but the public elections were 
merely to confirm the choice made by the prince. 

Military and Financial Organization. — As the real power 
rested upon the soldiers, he made the army a permanent 
organization, and stationed it along the frontiers in in- 
trenched camps ready to resist the barbarians. Regula- 
tions determined the duration of service, the treatment 
of veterans and the pay of the three or four hundred thou- 
sand men. Fleets at Frejus, Misenum and Ravenna acted 
as the police of the Mediterranean. Flotillas were sta- 
tioned on the Danube and Euxine. As he was chief of all 
the legions and as the generals were only his lieutenants 
fighting under the auspices of the imperator, none of them, 
according to Roman ideas, could enjoy a triumph. 

The civil was patterned after the military administration. 
Annually the senate continued to send proconsuls to the 
interior provinces which the emperor left it. The frontier 
provinces Avere governed by imperial legates who retained 
office as long as the sovereign saw fit. This was a salutary 



136 HISTORY OF THE ROMAICS [b.c. 12, 

innovation, because now the officers remained long at their 
posts, and hence became acquainted with the needs of those 
under their administration. 

As there were apparently two kinds of provinces, there 
were two financial administrations, the public treasury 
or serarium, and the treasury of the prince or the fiscus. 
The gerarium, which received the tributes of the senatorial 
provinces, was moreover put by the senate at the sover- 
eign's disposition, so he disposed of all the financial re- 
sources of the empire just as he disposed of all its military 
forces. These resources were insufficient to defray the new 
expenses. It became necessary to reestablish customs 
duties and create new taxes, such as a twentieth on inheri- 
tances, a hundredth on commodities and fines for celibacy. 
All these revenues, joined to the tributes of the provinces, 
yielded perhaps eighty or a hundred million dollars. 

Administration of Augustus in the Provinces and at Rome. 
— If everything belonged to Augustus, his time, his ser- 
vices, and even his fortune belonged to all. During his 
long journeys through the provinces, he relieved cities in 
debt and rebuilt those which some calamity had destroyed. 
Tralles, Laodicea, Paphos, overthrown by earthquake, arose 
from their ruins more beautiful than before. One year he 
even defrayed from his own revenues all the taxes of the 
province of Asia. The measures of the imperial adminis- 
tration in general accorded with the conduct of the prince, 
who was an example and a lesson to his officers. In re- 
ligious matters no violence was allowed save in Gaul, 
where druidism with its human sacrifices was vigorously 
assailed. That the taxes might be justly apportioned a 
general register of valuation was needed. Augustus had 
this drawn up. 

Three geometers travelled throughout the empire and 
measured distances. This work served also another end. 
The empire once surveyed and measured, it was easy to 
make roads. Augustus repaired those of Italy, constructed 
those of Cisalpine Gaul and covered all Gaul and the Ibe- 
rian peninsula with highways. Then upon these roads a 
regular service of posts was organized. The messengers 
of the prince and the armies could be rapidly transported 
from one province to another. Commerce and civilization 
gained thereby. New life circulated in this empire, so 
admirably planted all around the Mediterranean Sea. 



A.D. 9.] AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 137 

Augustus devoted particular attention to contenting the 
people of Rome with games and distribution of corn. He 
adorned the city with numerous monuments, appointed a 
prefect and city cohorts to preserve public tranquillity, and 
night watches to prevent or extinguish fires. He could 
boast of leaving a city of marble where he had found one 
of brick. In the still barbarous Western provinces, by 
making new territorial divisions, he effaced their former 
independent habits, and founded numerous colonies to mul- 
tiply the Roman element in the midst of these populations. 

During the triumvirate Octavius had often exhibited 
cruelty, but Augustus almost always pardoned. He lived 
less like a prince than like a plain private person, simply 
andAvith dignity with his friends, jNIsecenas, Horace, Virgil, 
Agrippa, who were not always courtiers. 

Foreign Policy. Defeat of Varus (9 a.d.). — After 
Actium he thought the wars were finished, and by closing 
the doors of the temple of Janus he had declared that the 
new monarchy renounced the spirit of conquest which had 
animated the republic. In fact, there were no. serious wars 
in the East, where the mere threat of an expedition decided 
the Parthians to restore the flags of Crassus. But in 
Europe the empire had not yet found its natural limits. 
In order to place Italy, Greece and Macedon beyond the 
danger of invasion, it was necessary to control the course 
of the Danube. To avoid apprehension on the left bank of 
the Rhine the German tribes must be expelled from the 
right bank. This was the object of a series of expeditions, 
all of which succeeded with one exception. In the year 
16, Drusus and Tiberius subdued the tribes in Rheetia, Vin- 
delicia and Noricum on the northern slope of the Alps, 
thereby extending the Roman frontier to the upper Danube. 
Seven years later Drusus crossed the lower Rhine and 
penetrated to the banks of the Elbe. After his death his 
tjrother Tiberius took up his winter quarters in the very 
heart of Germany, and the Roman influence spread by 
degrees from his camp. Meanwhile the Marcoman Marbod 
was founding in Bohemia a kingdom defended by 70,000 
foot and 4000 horse, all disciplined in the Roman manner. 
Augustus became alarmed at these neighbors, and was pre- 
paring a formidable army to destroy this rising state beyond 
the Danube, when the Pannoni and Dalmati rebelled in its 
rear. Tiberius induced Marbod to treat, and thus was able 



138 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 9-M. 

to fall upon the rebels with fifteen legions. However 
three campaigns were necessary to overcome their desperate 
resistance. 

Only five days after the definite submission of the Pannoni 
and Dalmati, Rome learned with consternation that three 
legions had been drawn into an ambush by Hermann, a 
young chieftain of the Cherusci, and had been utterly 
destroyed together with their general Varus. Northern 
Germany was rising in revolt, and was pushing the Roman 
domination back upon the Rhine. "Varus, Varus! Give 
me back my legions," Augustus cried in sorrow. Marbod, 
jealous of Hermann, made no movement, and Augustus, 
reassured on the score of the Danube, was able to send 
Tiberius into Gaul. He fortified the strongholds along the 
Rhine, reestablished discipline and for the sake of restor- 
ing a little confidence even risked the eagles on the other 
side of the river. Germanicus took his place in command 
of the eight legions which garrisoned the left bank of the 
Rhine. The enemy content with their victory were not 
yet desirous to attack. The empire was saved, but the 
glory of a long and pacific reign was tarnished by this 
disaster. Augustus died five years afterwards (14 a.d.). 

Augustus gave his name to a great literary epoch. Pos- 
terity pictures him surrounded by Titus Livius, Horace 
and Virgil, whom the other illustrious writers, Lucretius, 
Catullus, Cicero, Sallust and CcBsar, had preceded by a few 
years. We possess nothing of Varius, a tragic poet much 
lauded at the time, but many elegies are left us of Tibullus, 
Gallus and Propertius, and almost all the works of Ovid. 
Trogus Pompeius compiled a universal history which un- 
happily is lost; Celsus, a sort of encyclopaidia, of which 
only the books relating t^ medicine remain ; and the Greek 
Strabo composed his geography. 

Tiberius (14-37). — Augustus had adopted Tiberius, a 
son of his wife Livia by a former husband. He succeeded 
without difficulty. To occupy the turbulent legions on the 
frontier, Tiberius ordered Germanicus, who was both his 
nephew and his adopted son, to lead the army beyond the 
Rhine. They marched as far as the forest of Teutoberg, 
where the three legions of Varus had perished. At first 
the Germans nowhere made a stand. Growing bolder in 
the following campaign they ventured to meet the Roman 
army, and were defeated in the great battle of Idistavisus. ; 



A.D. 14-26.] AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 139 

A second battle was a second massacre, and Varus was 
avenged. German icus then returned to Gaul, where he 
found letters from Tiberius recalling him to Rome to 
receive the consulship, and to undertake an important mis- 
sion in Asia. 

In Rome Tiberius governed mildly, refusing the honors 
and temples offered to him. He disdained the base flattery 
of the senate as one who knew its value. To the prov- 
inces he sent able governors, did- not increase taxation, and 
relieved the frequent distress. Twelve Asiatic cities, 
ruined by an earthquake, were exempted for Ave years 
from all dues. Tiberius practised his maxim, "A good 
shepherd shears his sheep, but does not flay them." 

In the East, Germanicus without drawing his sword 
humbled the Parthians, who allowed him to give the Arme- 
nian crown to a faithful vassal of the empire, and to reduce 
Cappadocia and the Comagene to provinces. On returning 
from a journey to Egypt he had violent disputes with Piso, 
governor of Syria. His death, which occurred some time 
afterward, was attributed to poison, and Piso's indecent joy 
seemed to designate him as the criminal. Piso to regain 
the government, which he had resigned rather than obey 
Germanicus, did not shrink from civil war. Defeated, he 
committed suicide. Tacitus intimates, without direct as- 
sertion, that Tiberius poisoned Germanicus and then caused 
Piso to disappear. 

The first nine years of Tiberius' reign Vv^ere prosperous. 
After the death of his son Drusus, everything changed. 
He had a favorite, Sejanus, who had once saved his life 
when a vault fell in upon him, and whom he made prefect 
of the praetorian guard. Dazzled by success, Sejanus wished 
to mount higher still. He believed that he might reach 
the supreme power by overthrowing the sovereign and his 
children. His first victim was the emperor's own son, 
Drusus, whom he secretly poisoned. This death was a 
mortal blow* to Tiberius. He felt himself alone and friend- 
less. Naturally suspicious, he now everywhere beheld 
plots and intrigues. To foil real or imaginary conspira- 
tors he employed his power mercilessly. About this 
time, Tiberius, then sixty-nine years of age, quitted Rome 
never to return and withdrew to the delicious island of 
Caprese, at the entrance of the Gulf of Naples (26). Se- 
janus had become the intermediary between him and the 



140 HISTORY OF THE ROMAN'S [a.d. 26-41. 

empire. Inflaming the suspicions of the old man, he per- 
suaded him to become the executioner of all his relatives 
whom he represented as impatient heirs coveting their in- 
heritance. Agrippina, the widow of Germanicus, was shut 
up in the island of Pandataria, where four years later she 
died of starvation. Of her three sons, Nero was put to 
death or killed himself; Drusus was thrown into prison, 
where he perished of hunger; the youth of Caius protected 
him against the fears of Tiberius. 

The whole family of Germanicus being practically de- 
stroyed, Sejanus, drawing more closely to his goal, dared 
solicit the hand of Drusus' widow. This was almost 
equivalent to asking to be made the emperor's heir. His 
suit was refused. Hence he resolved to strike at the em- 
peror himself and gained accomplices even. in the palace. 
But Tiberius understood him. Craftily depriving him of 
his guard, he had him suddenly arrested in the open senate. 
The people tore his body to pieces, and numerous executions 
followed his death. 

"The cruelty of Tiberius," says Suetonius, "knew no 
bounds when he learned that his son Drusus had died of 
poison. The place of execution is still shown at Capreae. 
It is a rock, Avhence the condemned at a given signal were 
hurled into the sea." Close beside it rose the palaces, scenes 
of infamous orgies, as Tacitus asserts. Tiberius maintained 
peace along the frontiers, which were seldom disturbed. 
He died at the age of seventy-eight. 

Caligula (37-41). — With acclamations Kome hailed the 
accession of Caligula, son of Germanicus, and the new 
emperor at first justified all her hopes. Soon however, in 
consequence of an illness which seemed to have unsettled 
his reason, he entered upon a Avar against the gods, Avhom 
he blasphemed; against nature, whose laws he wished to 
violate, as in spanning the sea between Baiae and Puteoli 
by a bridge ; against the nobility of Eome, whom he deci- 
mated; and against the provinces, which he drained by his 
exactions. In less than two years he had squandered in 
mad extravagance sixty million dollars, the savings of 
Tiberius. To replenish his treasury he appropriated the 
lives and fortunes of the rich. One day in Gaul he lost 
while playing at dice. He ordered the registers of the 
province to be brought, and marked for death those citizens 
who paid the heaviest taxes. " You play for a few miser- 



A.D. 41-54.] AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 141 

able drachmas," he said afterward to his courtiers, "but I 
have just won millions at a throw!" For four years the 
world endured this raving madman, who wished the Roman 
people had but one head that he might strike it off at a 
blow. At last he was killed by Chserea, a tribune of the 
prsetorian cohorts. 

Claudius (41-54). — Chaerea was a republican. The occa- 
sion seemed favorable for the senate to again grasp the 
power. It made the attempt, and for three days one could 
imagine that he was in a republic. This did not suit the 
soldiers. In a recess of the palace they found Claudius, 
the brother of Germanicus, and carried him to their camp. 
He was then fifty years of age, a man of learning who wrote 
the history of the Etruscans and Carthaginians, but sickly 
and timid. His lack of resolution had the most deplorable 
results. The real masters of the empire were his wife, 
Messalina, and his freedmen, Polybius, Narcissus and 
Pallas. Nevertheless they effected some wise reforms, 
made a seaport at Ostia, and drained Lake Fucinus. Clau- 
dius f>ersecuted the Druids, whose worship he sought to 
abolish. 

Abroad, Mauritania and half of Britain were conquered, 
the Germans repressed, the Bosphorus held to its allegiance, 
Thrace, Lydia, and Judaea reduced to provinces, and the 
divisions among the Parthians encouraged. But nine or 
ten plots formed against the life of Claudius brought on 
terrible vengeance. Thirty-live senators and three hundred 
knights perished. Many were the victims of the hatred of 
Messalina, who in defiance of the emperor, the laws and 
public decency contracted a second marriage before death 
or divorce had dissolved the first, and with the usual cere- 
monies espoused the senator Silius. The freedmen, alarmed 
for their own safety, wrested from Claudius an order of 
death, and replaced Messalina by Agrippina, a niece of the 
emperor, who acquired for herself hardly less notoriety. 
The new em2:)ress, desirous to secure for her son Nero, then 
eleven years of age, the heritage which rightfully belonged 
to the young Britannicus, the son of Claudius, surrounded 
the emperor with her creatures, appointed Burrus prefect 
of the prsetorian guard, and Seneca tutor to Nero. Then 
b}^ way of finishing the affair she poisoned Claudius. 

Nero (54-G8). — -At his accession Claudius to assure the 
fidelity of the soldiers had given a donative of nearly eight 



142 HISTORY OF THE ROMAXS [a.d. 54-66. 

hundred dollars to each prsetorian and a proportionate sum 
to each legionary. This unfortunate innovation the army 
established as a law, and eventually it put the empire at 
auction to the highest bidder. Thus revolutions became 
more frequent. It was the interest of the soldiers to have 
the throne often vacant that they might receive the dona- 
tive the oftener. 

Nero began well. The first five years of his reign de- 
served praise. " How I wish that I did not know how to 
write ! " he said one day, when a death sentence was pre- 
sented for his signature. Seneca and Burrus worked in 
concert to restrain the fiery passions of their pupil, but 
Agrippina's ambition brought about the explosion. In 
league with the freedman Pallas, she intended that nothing 
should be done in the palace without her. Seneca and 
Burrus, in order to remove a domination Avhich had debased 
Claudius, had the freedman disgraced. On Agrippina's 
threat to lead Britannicus to the praetorian camp, Nero poi- 
soned his adopted brother (55). A little later he robbed 
Otho of his wife Poppsea, and, irritated by the reproaches 
of his mother, caused a vessel upon which she had embarked 
to sink on the open sea. As she saved herself by swim- 
ming, he sent soldiers to kill her. His wife Octavia and 
perhaps Burrus also suffered the same fate. The Romans 
beheld their emperor, the heir of Caesar, drive chariots in 
the arena and on the stage recite verses to the accom- 
paniment of the lyre ! The burning of Rome in the year 
64 cannot be imputed to him. But he made use of it as a 
pretext to persecute the Christians. Some of them, envel- 
oped in the skins of beasts, were torn by dogs; others, 
smeared with pitch, were set on fire alive, and like torches 
lit up the gardens of Nero during a festival which he gave 
the populace. To pay for his extravagance he dealt exile 
and confiscation. At last a conspiracy of senators and 
knights was found out. Seneca, his nephew, the poet 
Lucan and the virtuous Thrasea were forced to open their 
own veins. This raving madman had the sickly vanity of 
inferior artists. To find more worthy appreciation of his 
talents he made a journey to Greece, where he took part in 
all the games and collected many crowns, even at Olympia, 
although he fell in the middle of the stadium; but he paid 
for these plaudits by proclaiming the liberty of Greece {^Q>). 

Nevertheless the empire began to weary of obeying a bad 



A.D.68.] AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 143 

singer, as he was called by Vindex, propraetor of Gaul, 
who offered the empire to Galba. Despite the death of 
Vindex the rebellion was successful and extended to Eome, 
whence Nero abandoned by all was forced to flee. He 
took refuge at the farm of one of his freedmen. When he 
saw himself about to be captured, he thrust a dagger into 
his throat, exclaiming, " What an artist the world is about 
to lose ! " With him the race of the Caesars became extinct. 
Since the time of the great Julius, however, it had been 
continued only through adoption. 

Under Xero, Queen Boadicea in Britain rose against the 
Komans. Corbulo won victories over the Germans and 
Parthians. The reward of the skilful general was an order 
to commit suicide. 



144 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 09. 



THE FLAVIANS 
(69-96) 

Galba, Otho and Vitellius (68-69). — The praetorians de- 
manded the rich donative which had been promised them 
in the name of Galba. " I choose my sokliers," he replied, 
"bnt I do not bny them." This hanghty speech was not 
borne out by vigorous acts. Otho, a former friend of Nero, 
an ambitions man overwhelmed with debts, had no difficulty 
in stirring up the praetorians to massacre Galba. 

But already the legions of the Rhine had at Cologne 
proclaimed their commander, Vitellius, emperor. They 
marched upon Italy, and near Cremona won a great battle 
in consequence of which Otho killed himself. 

Vitellius was famous above all for his voracity. He per- 
mitted the soldiers to do everything and troubled himself 
about nothing except his pleasures, never dreaming that the 
Eastern legions might feel tempted to imitate what the 
Gallic legions had done for Galba, the pratorians for Otho, 
and the legions of the Rhine for himself. The profits of a 
revolution were now so certain that each army desired to 
secure them. Vespasian was then at the head of powerful 
forces, charged with subduing the rebellious Jews. His 
troops proclaimed him emperor. Leaving to his son Titus 
the task of besieging Jerusalem, he marched to take posses- 
sion of Egypt and despatched Mucianus to Italy. The latter 
Avas forestalled by Antonius Primus, who defeated the troops 
of Vitellius near Cremona and a few days later captured Rome. 
Vitellius, after suffering many outrages, was put to death. 

Vespasian (69-79). — Flavins Vespasianus, the son of a 
tax collector, was of plain manners and had made his way 
by merit. He learned in Egypt of the successes of his gen- 
erals and the death of his rival. But two wars were still 
going on. Titus conducted that against the Jews which 
though fierce was not dangerous to the empire. The other, 
of far more serious nature, sprang from the rebellion of the 



A.D. 70-79.] THE FLAVIANS 145 

Batavian Civilis. This man, a member of the Batavian 
royal family, had resolved to free his nation. He sum- 
moned the Gauls to independence and the Germans to the 
pillage of the provinces. The Gauls could not agree among 
themselves. Cerealis, one of Vespasian's generals, van- 
quished Civilis, who retired to his island, organized there 
a vigorous resistance and finally obtained an honorable 
peace for the Batavi. They remained, not the tributaries 
Wt the allies of Eome, on condition of furnishing soldiers. 
While these events were taking place, Titus was repress- 
ing the revolt of the Jews. Roused to sedition by the 
extortions of their last governors, they had heroically re- 
commenced the struggle of the Maccabees against foreign 
domination. They believed that the time was come for 
that Messiah whom their sacred books foretold. Refusing 
to recognize him in the holy victim of Golgotha, they 
thought that he was about to manifest himself, glorious and 
mighty, amid the crash of arms. The insurrection had in- 
vaded Galilee, where the historian Josephus organized the 
rebellion. Vespasian and Titus confined it in the capital 
of Judaea. After a memorable siege Jerusalem fell. The 
Temple was burned, the ploughshare passed over its ruins 
and the dispersion of the Hebrew people began (70). 
Eleven hundred thousand Jews fell in this war. 

AVhile Vespasian's generals were rendering his arms tri- 
umphant, he himself at Rome was degrading unworthy sen- 
ators and knights, improving the finances that Nero had 
left in a wretched state, restoring the Capitol which had 
been destroyed in a conflagration, constructing the immense 
Coliseum and the temple of peace, founding a library, and 
appointing teachers of rhetoric whom the state paid. 
Nevertheless Vespasian felt obliged to expel from Rome 
the Stoics, who ostentatiously displayed republican senti- 
ments. Because of his too great freedom of speech the 
most respected of the senators, Helvidius Prisons, was 
exiled and afterward put to death, though contrary to the 
intention of Vespasian. Of serious mind, a man of business 
and method, Vespasian laughed at flatteries as at apotheosis. 
" I feel myself becoming a god," he said when he beheld 
his last hour approaching. But he tried to rise, saying, 
" An emperor should die on his feet." 

Titus (79-81). — He was succeeded by Titus, who had 
distinguished himself in the German and British wars and 



146 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a. d. 79-96. 

especially in Judaea. Though his dissoluteness and violence 
had been feared, he surprised all by his self-control, and 
his gentle and affable manners Avon for him the surname of 
'^ Delight of the human race." He considered a day lost in 
which he had done no good action. 

Frightful calamities attended his brief reign. A confla- 
gration lasting three days devastated a part of Rome. 
Pestilence ravaged Italy. On November 1, 79, Vesuvius 
suddenly vomited forth masses of ashes and lava which 
buried Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae. Pliny the nat- 
uralist, then commanding the fleet of Misenum, wished to 
behold this terrible phenomenon close by, and was either 
stifled by the ashes or crushed by the stones shot forth from 
the volcano. Titus reigned only seventeen months. 

Domitian (81-96). — Domitian, his brother, was immedi- 
ately proclaimed. In his first acts he showed firmness and 
justice, repressed all the abuses of which he could obtain 
information, and by his active watchfulness assured to the 
provinces an almost paternal government. The frontiers, 
were well guarded and the barbarians held in check, includ- 
ing the Dacians who were becoming formidable. But as 
his thirst for money grew with his fears, he soon became 
grasping and cruel. Informers multiplied and Avere followed 
by executions. His cousin Sabinus Avas put to death, be- 
cause the crier who Avas to name him consul by mistake had 
called him emperor. Many rich persons on account of their 
Avealth Avere accused of high treason. 

A revolt of the governor of upper Germany increased his 
tyranny, because Domitian believed himself to be surrounded 
even in Rome by the accomplices of the rebel. Many sena- 
tors perished. Some Avere accused of the ncAV crime of 
judaizing. Under this pretext his cousin Flavins Clemens 
and his own niece Domitilla were condemned. At last a 
plot Avas formed among the people of the palace, by Avhom 
he Avas murdered. 

It Avas Domitian hoAvever Avho completed the conquest 
of the greater part of Britain. Vespasian had sent thither 
Agricola, the father-in-laAV of Tacitus, Avho pacified the 
island Avithout hoAvever subduing the mountaineers of 
Caledonia. Only the south of Scotland Avas united to the 
province. To protect it against incursions from the north, 
Agricola raised a line of fortified posts between the firths 
of the Clyde and the Forth, and Roman civilization aided 
by numerous colonists speedily took possession of Britain. 




Cotyriglil, ISHS, by T. Y. Crowell «.• Co. 




Ei,g.;,ieJ by Ouhuii, Ul.niuu i Cu., N. y.. 



A.D. y()-100.] THE ANTONINES 147 



XI 

THE ANTONINES 
(96-193) 

Nerva (96-98). — The Flavian family was extinct. The 
senate made haste to proclaim Nerva, a former consul. 
With this prince began a period of eighty years which has 
been called the golden age of humanity. It is the epoch of 
the Antonines. Though Nerva displayed good intentions, 
he had neither the strength nor the time to realize them. 
He adopted the Spanish Trajan, the best general of the 
empire. 

Trajan (98-117). — When Nerva died, Trajan was at 
Cologne. Recognized as emperor by the senate, the people 
and the armies, he remained one year more on the banks 
of the Rhine to pacify the frontiers and restore discipline. 
He wished to enter Rome on foot. The Empress Plotina 
followed his example. As she ascended the palace steps, 
she turned toward the crowd to say, " What I am on enter- 
ing, I wish to be on departing." Trajan banished informers, 
diminished the taxes and sold the numerous palaces which 
his predecessors had acquired by confiscations. In order to 
encourage the free population, he distributed among the 
cities of Italy revenues intended for the support of poor 
children. The senate could almost believe itself transported 
to the days of its ancient power, for it deliberated on seri- 
ous affairs and really assigned the offices. Trajan even 
restored the elections to the comitia. At least the candi- 
dates presented themselves to solicit as in former days the 
votes of the people. He himself in Campus Martins can- 
vassed in the midst of the crowd. The monuments which 
he raised had as their object public utility or the adornment 
of Rome, like the Trajan column which still recounts his 
exploits. Among his works the most important were the 
completion of a highway which traversed the whole Roman 
empire from the Pontus Euxinus to Gaul, and the restora- 



148 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 100-117. 

tion of the road thrown across the Pontine marshes. He 
caused the seaports of Ancona and Civita-Vecchia to be 
excavated at his expense, established colonies in differ- 
ent places, either as military or commercial stations, and 
founded the Ulpian library, which became the richest in 
Rome. Only two reproaches can be brought against him; 
he had not the sobriety of Cato and he persecuted the 
Christians. He forbade their being hunted, but ordered 
that such as made themselves prominent should be beaten. 
He himself condemned Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, to be 
cast to the lions. 

His reign was the most warlike which the empire had 
beheld. He directed in person an expedition against the 
Dacians (101), crossed the Danube at the head of 60,000 
men, vanquished the barbarians in three battles,- capt- 
ured their capital, Sarmizegethusa, and forced them to 
sue for peace (103). The following year they rebelled 
again. Trajan threw over the river a stone bridge, the 
remains of which are still to be seen, several times entered 
Dacia, vanquished Decebalus, who killed himself, and re- 
duced the country to a province. Numerous colonists were 
sent thither and Nourishing cities rose. In consequence the 
Roumanian nation still speaks on the banks of the Danube a 
dialect which is almost the language of the contemporaries 
of Trajan. 

In the East he reduced Armenia to a province. The 
kings of Colchis and Iberia promised entire obedience, and 
the Albanians of the Caspian accepted the ruler whom he 
gave them. One of his lieutenants, Cornelius Palma, had 
already subjugated some of the Arabs. Trajan penetrated 
into Mesopotamia, captured Ctesiphon, Seleucia and Susa, 
and descended as far as the Persian Gulf. "If I were 
younger," said he, "I would go and subdue the Indies." 
Such rapid conquests could not be durable. The vanquished 
rose as soon as the emperor departed and the Jews again 
revolted everywhere. Blood flowed in streams. Trajan 
had not even the consolation of seeing the end of this for- 
midable insurrection. He died at Selinus in Cilicia. 

Hadrian (117-138). — Hadrian abandoned the useless con- 
quests of his predecessors in the East. To prevent the 
inroads of the Caledonian mountaineers into Britain, he 
constructed from the mouth of the Tyne to the Solway 
Firth the wall of the Picts, numerous remains of which 



A.D. 117-138.] THE ANTONINES 149 

are still to be seen. His only war was a fierce one against 
the Jews. He changed the name of the city of David to 
^lia Capitolina, erected there altars to all the gods and for- 
bade the Jews to observe the bloody rite of circumcision. 
Thus they were now threatened with the loss of their re- 
ligious, as they had lost already their political, existence. 
At the call of the doctor Akiba they once more appealed to 
the verdict of arms under the leadership of Barkochba, 
the Son of the Star, who claimed to be the long-expected 
Messiah. Nearly 600,000 Jews perished and the survivors 
v/ere sold. • 

Hadrian's internal administration was sagacious. He 
relieved the provinces from those arrears of debt which 
had accumulated during sixteen years, and did away with 
the republican forms which since the time of Augustus had 
perpetuated the false image of Eonian liberty. He divided 
the offices into those of the state, palace and army, the 
civil magistracies holding the highest rank and the military 
the lowest. For the transaction of business he established 
four chanceries, and invested the praetorian prefects w^ith 
both civil and military authority. So they formed a sort of 
upper ministry. And lastly Salvius Julianus by command 
of the emperor formed a sort of code from existing edicts 
which, under the name of perpetual edict, acquired the 
force of law (131). 

The army, like the palace and the higher administration 
of the government, was subjected to a severe reform. Ha- 
drian made many regulations which have survived him, touch- 
ing discipline, drill and the age at which a man became eligible 
to the different grades. He visited all the provinces one after 
the other, most of the time on foot, accompanied only by a 
few lawyers and artists. A number of cities were enriched 
by him with splendid monuments, as Nimes, where he prob- 
al3ly erected the amphitheatre in honor of Plotina ; Athens, 
where he passed two winters ; Alexandria ; and Eome, which 
owes to him the castle of San Angelo (Moles Hadriani) and 
the bridge which connects the two banks. He encouraged 
commerce and industry, and rendered the slaves amenable 
to the courts alone, and not to the caprice of their masters. 

The good deeds of this prince make us forget his shameful 
morals, which however were those of his age, the influence 
exercised over him by Antinous, of whom he eventually 
made a god, and certain acts of excessive severity. In 



150 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 138-180. 

the early days of his reign, the senate executed four 
men of consular rank accused of conspiracy without even 
awaiting his orders. Toward the end of his life, after 
his successive adoption of Verus and Antoninus, plots real 
or imaginary began again and many senators were sacrificed. 
He died at Baiae. 

Antoninus (138-161). — Antoninus, a native of Nimes, had 
been adopted by Hadrian on condition that he in turn would 
adopt Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. He reigned twenty- 
three years in profound peace, and received from his grateful 
contemporaries the surname of " Bather of the human race." 
A wise economy in the administration of the finances enabled 
him to found useful institutions and to assist cities afflicted 
with some calamity, like Rome, Antioch, Narbonne and 
Rhodes, which had been ruined by fire and earthquake. 
" The wealth of a prince," he said, " is public happiness." 
Two conspiracies against him were discovered. Only their 
chiefs perished. A defence of Christianity composed by 
the philosopher Justinus obtained for the Christians, who 
were already numerous in Rome and in the provinces, tolera- 
tion from the emperor and the magistrates. Antoninus car- 
ried on no important war, nothing more than petty expeditions 
for the maintenance of order on the frontiers. 

Marcus Aurelius (161-180). — Marcus Aurelius, surnamed 
the Philosopher, undertook to continue the administration 
of his three predecessors. He had shared the title of Augus- 
tus with Verus, his son-in-law and adopted brother. He 
sent him to the East during a crisis, but Verus concerned 
himself at Antioch only with his debauches, and left the 
skilful Avidius Cassius to capture Ctesiphon and Seleucia. 
A terrible pestilence raged at Rome ; earthquakes devastated 
the empire ; the German tribes on the Danube rose in revolt. 
The Stoic philosopher who occupied the throne did not allow 
himself to be alarmed, and amid the perils of the war against 
the Marcomanni wrote the admirable maxims of Stoic wisdom 
contained in the twelve books of his work entitled Medita- 

ti07lS. 

Almost all the barbarian v/orld was in commotion. The 
Sarmatian Roxolani, the Vandals and other tribes of whom 
we know only the names, crossed the Danube and penetrated 
even to the neighborhood of Aquileia. The two emperors 
marched against them, and the barbarians retreated without 
giving battle so as to secure their booty. A certain number 



A.D. 180-192.] THE ANTONINES 151 

even accepted the lands which Marcus Aurelius gave them, 
or enrolled among the auxiliaries of the legions. Verus 
died on his return from this expedition. The as yet uncon- 
quered Germans appeared once more under the walls of 
Aquileia. In order to obtain the money required for this 
war, Marcus Aurelius sold the treasures and jewels of the 
imperial palace. He was obliged to arm the slaves and 
gladiators and enroll the barbarians (172). The enemy 
retreated. The emperor pursued the Quadi even to their 
own country, where on the banks of the Gran he incurred 
a serious danger. A storm accompanied by thunder and 
lightning saved him, and gave rise to the tradition of the 
Christian legion that hurled thunderbolts. A treaty of 
peace with many nations apparently gave a glorious termina- 
tion to this war. From the banks of the Danube, Marcus 
Aurelius hurried to Syria to suppress the revolt of Cassius, 
who was killed by his soldiers. Almost immediately the 
Marcomanni, the Bastarnse and the Goths resumed their 
incursions. The unhappy emperor, whom fate condemned 
to pass his life in the camp, hastened to march against them 
with his son Commodus. He died without having finished 
the war at Vindobona, now Vienna. 

Commodus (180-192). — Commodus, aged nineteen years, 
concluded a hasty peace with the Marcomanni and the Quadi, 
took 20,000 of those barbarians into the service of the em- 
pire, and returned to Rome to contend more than 700 times 
in the arena, to drive chariots and play the part of Hercules. 
Perennis, the prefect of the guards on whom at first de- 
volved the cares of government, was massacred in 186. He 
was replaced, both as praetorian prefect and imperial favor- 
ite, by the freedman Cleander, a Phrygian, who made money 
out of the life and honor of the citizens. Three years later 
the cruel and avaricious favorite was killed in a popular 
sedition which plague and famine had excited. Then Com- 
modus launched sentences of death against the most virtu- 
ous citizens, against his relatives, against the senate, even 
against the great jurisconsult Salvius Julianus and allowed 
the praetorians the utmost license. As those nearest to him 
were the most endangered, it was their hand which smote 
him. His concubine Marcia, the chamberlain Electus, and 
the prefect of the guards Lsetus, whom he intended to put 
to death, had him strangled by an athlete. 



152 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 192-197. 



XII 

MILITARY ANARCHY 

(193-385) 

Pertinax and Didius Julianus (192-193). —Pertinax, pre- 
fect of tlie city, proclaimed emperor by the murderers of 
Commodus, was recognized by the senate and the praeto- 
rians, but, when he tried to restore order in the state and 
the iinances, he displeased the soldiers, who murdered him 
in his palace. Then began scenes without a name, and 
happily without example. The soldiers literally put the 
empire up at auction. Two purchasers presented them- 
selves, who rivalled each other in promises. The mon- 
archy of Augustus was adjudged to the aged ex-consul, 
Didius Julianus, at 6250 drachmas for each soldier. The 
sale finished, the praetorians in battle array conducted Didius 
to the palace, and the senators accepted the man whom the 
soldiers had elected. He had promised more than he could 
perform. The creditors, implacable toward their imprudent 
debtor, would no doubt have overthrown him themselves, 
had they not been forestalled by the legions of the frontiers, 
who also wished to bestow the empire. The British legions 
proclaimed their chief Albinus; the Syrians, Pescennius 
Niger ; the Albanians, the African Septimius Severus. The 
latter being the nearest to E-ome immediately set out for the 
capital. The senate, encouraged by his approach, declared 
Didius a public enemy, had him slain, punished the murder- 
ers of Pertinax and recognized Severus as emperor. 

Septimius Severus (193-211). — He broke the power of 
the praetorians ; but, instead of abolishing that turbulent 
guard, he contented himself with certain changes and even 
rendered it more numerous. In Asia Minor he defeated 
Niger, who was killed while about to flee to the Parthians 
(194). Near Lyons he overthrew Albinus (197), whose head 
he sent to the sena-te with a threatening letter. On his 
return to Rome, he multiplied the executions. Forty-one 



A.D. 197-217.] MILITARY ANARCHY 153 

senatorial families became extinct under the headsman's 
axe. 

To extenuate his cruelties by a little glory, he endeavored 
to seize Seleucia and Ctesiphon from the Parthians, who 
had made an alliance with Niger. On his return he ordered 
a persecution against the Christians, in spite of the elo- 
quent apologies of Tertullian and Minutius Felix. Severus 
administered the finances with economy. After his death 
corn sufficient for seven years was found in the granaries 
at Rome. "Keep the soldiers contented," he said to his 
children, ^'and do not trouble yourselves about the rest. 
With them you can repulse the barbarians and repress the 
people." Military discipline was strictly maintained, but 
at the same time the soldiers obtained privileges and in- 
crease of pay. After a few quiet years Severus was called 
to Britain by a revolt which he had no difficulty in quelling. 
He penetrated a great distance into the Caledonian moun- 
tains, but incessantly harassed and worn out by continual 
attacks which cost him as many as 50,000 men, he returned 
to the policy of Antoninus, and constructed a wall from one 
shore to the other along the line traced by Agricola. 

During this expedition he had been constantly ill. Never- 
theless his son Bassianus, called Caracalla from the name 
of a Gallic garment which he was fond of wearing, could 
not wait for his approaching end, and tried to assassinate 
him. From that time the emperor's malady increased. 
He expired with the words : " I have been everything, and 
everything is nothing." His last countersign had been 
"laboremus." He left two sons, Caracalla and Geta. 

Caracalla (211-217). — The two princes had already dis- 
turbed the palace by their quarrels. On his retriirn to Rome 
Caracalla stabbed his brother in the arms of their mother. 
Papinianus, refusing to make a public defence of the fratri- 
cide, was put to death and with him perished 20,000 parti- 
sans of Geta. Caracalla made his cruelty felt in all the 
provinces, particularly at Alexandria, where in order to 
avenge himself for some epigrams he ordered a massacre of 
the unarmed people. A centurion, who had an injury to 
revenge, killed him. 

Macrinus (217). — The army elected the prefect of the 
guards Macrinus, who, after a sanguinary battle with the 
Parthians in Mesopotamia, purchased peace at the price of 
50,000,000 denarii ; but the severe measures which he took 



154 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 218-244 

for the restoration of discipline destroyed his popularity. 
The soldiers mutinied in their camp, proclaimed Bassianus, 
the young and handsome high priest of Emesa, and massa- 
cred Macrinus. 

Heliogabalus (218-222). — Bassianus, better known as 
Heliogabalus from the Syrian god whose priest he was, 
brought to Eome the most shameful passions of the East. 
His luxury and depravity would have made Nero blush. 
He formed for himself a senate of women and, like the 
great king, wished to be adored. His palace was strewed 
with gold and silver dust, and his fish ponds filled with 
rose water in which to bathe. The soldiers were soon hor- 
rified at this unnatural emperor, who attired himself in 
women's clothes. They killed him, together with his mother 
Soemis, and saluted as emperor his cousin Alexander, aged 
fourteen, who remained under the guidance of his grand- 
mother Msesa and his mother Mamaea. 

Alexander Severus (222-235). — The two empresses devoted 
themselves to developing the natural virtues of the young 
prince. They gave him as ministers the lawyers Paulus 
and Ulpianus and formed for him a council of twelve sena- 
tors. The empire passed many peaceful years under his 
reign. On the front of his palace these words, the founda- 
tion of all social morality, were carved : " Do unto others 
as thou wouldest have them do unto thee." Nevertheless, 
his hand was not firm enough to maintain discipline among 
the soldiers. One day they slew their prefect Ulpianus 
under his very eyes. 

The ruin of the Parthian kingdom and the foundation of 
a second Persian empire by the Sassanide Artaxerxes in 
226 occasioned a war on the Euphrates. The new monarch, 
who restored to the Persian mountaineers the domination 
which the Parthians had wrested from them, declared him- 
self of the ancient royal race, and claimed all the provinces 
which Darius had formerly possessed. Alexander replied 
by attacking the Persians. The expedition was fully suc- 
cessful. The news that the Germans had invaded Gaul 
and Illyricum hastened his return. He hurried to the Ehine 
and was there killed in a sedition. 

Six Emperors in Nine Years (235-244). — The soldiers 
proclaimed Maximinus, a Thracian Goth, who in his youth 
had been a shepherd. He was a giant, eight feet tall. He 
is said to have eaten daily thirty pounds of meat and to 



A.D. 244-253.] MILITARY ANARCHY 155 

have drunk an amphora of wine. This barbarian, who did 
not dare even once to come to Kome, treated the empire like 
a conquered country, pillaging cities and temples alike. 
Mankind soon tired of him. Despite their entreaties, the 
proconsul of Africa, Gordianus I, and his son, Gordianus II, 
who boasted their descent from the Gracchi and Trajan, 
were proclaimed emperors. E-ecognized by the senate but 
overthrown, the senate afterwards itself proclaimed Pu- 
l^ienus and Balbinus. The people demanded that a son of 
the younger Gordianus should be declared emperor. As for 
Maximinus, he and his son were assassinated before Aqui- 
leia which he was besieging, and a little later the senate's 
two emperors were massacred in their palaces. Then the 
prcetorians proclaimed Gordianus III. He was only thir- 
teen years of age. Misitheus, his tutor and father-in-law, 
governed wisely in his name, but the death of the clever 
counsellor enabled the Arab Philip to become prefect of the 
praetorian guard. He slew the emperor and took his place. 

During the reign of Gordianus the Pranks are mentioned 
for the first time. They were a confederation of Germanic 
tribes on the lower Khine, like that of the Alemanni on the 
upper Khine. The latter constantly threatened Phaetia and 
even Gaul itself, whose northern provinces the former in- 
vaded. At the other extremity of Germany, the Goths had 
gradually descended from Scandinavia upon the lower 
Danube and the Black Sea. They were for the time being 
the empire's most dangerous neighbors. 

Philip (244-249). Decius (249-251). The Thirty Tyrants 
(251-268). — At the end of live years the soldiers decided 
that Philip had reigned long enough and revolts broke out 
everywhere. Meanwhile the Goths crossed the Danube, and 
the senator Decius, whom he sent against them, was pro- 
claimed by the troops. A battle was fought near Verona 
and Philip was killed. The quiet enjoyed by the Church 
during Philip's reign has led to the erroneous belief that 
he was a Christian. Decius on the contrary persecuted it 
cruelly. However he reigned only two years and perished 
in a great battle with the Goths in Moesia (251). 

The army acknowledged Galbus, one of its generals, who 
promised the barbarians an annual tribute. This had the 
effect of inducing them to return, ^milianus, who routed 
them, assumed the purple. Both were killed by their sol- 
diers (253). Valerian, saluted as emj^eror, named his son 



156 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 258-270. 

Gallienus as Csesar and endeavored to arrest the imminent 
dissolution of the empire. In 258 he recaptured from the 
Parthians the great city of Antioch and penetrated into 
Mesopotamia; but near Edessa he was vanquished and 
made prisoner by King Sapor (260), who retained him in 
captivity exposed to insults until he died. Sapor had re- 
entered Syria. He was forced back across the Euphrates 
by the praetorian prefect Balista and the Arab chief Ode- 
nath. The latter grew powerful enough to secure recogni- 
tion as Augustus by Gallienus (264). Palmyra his capital, 
situated in an oasis at three days' distance from the Eu- 
phrates, had become rich and powerful through its immense 
commerce. Imposing ruins still testify to its past greatness. 

After the captivity of his father Gallienus ruled alone 
for eight years. His reign was one ceaseless struggle 
against the usurpers, barbarians and calamities of all sorts 
that descended upon the empire. This period is called that 
of the Thirty Tyrants. There were in reality only nineteen 
or twenty, all of whom died violent deaths like Saturnus, 
who said to his soldiers, " Comrades, you are losing a good 
general and making a wretched emperor," and who was slain 
because of his severity. Odenath, a valiant prince, delivered 
the East from the Persians and the Goths, who had disem- 
barked in Asia Minor, but was himself assassinated in 267 
by his nephew. Zenobia, his wife, slew the murderer and 
succeeded to her husband's power. Gaul was independent 
for fourteen years under five Gallic emperors. To internal 
disorder had been added barbarian invasions. The Goths 
and the Heruli had ravaged Greece and Asia Minor. One 
Goth wished to burn the library at Athens, but another pre- 
vented him. " Leave to our enemies," said he, " these books 
which deprive them of the love of arms." The Athenians 
however, led by the historian Dexippus, had the honor of 
defeating these brigands. 

Claudius (268). Aurelian (270). Tacitus (275). Probus 
(275). Carus (282). — Gallienus, who alone appeared legiti- 
mate among all these usurpers, was mortally wounded by 
traitors while besieging one of his competitors in Milan. As 
he expired, he chose for his successor a Dalmatian, Claudius, 
who was then the most renowned general of the empire. 
Claudius had only the time for a hurried march to Macedon, 
where he defeated 300,000 Goths near Naissus, and there 
died of the pest. Aurelian took his i^lace (270). He had 



A.D. 271-275.] MILITARY ANARCHY 157 

first to check an invasion of the Alemanni, who pene- 
trated through Rhsetia as far as Placentia where they 
destroyed a Roman army and thence as far as the shores 
of the Adriatic^ Kome was terror-stricken. The senate 
consulted the Sibylline books and in obedience to their 
responses sacrificed human victims. A victory gained on 
the banks of Metaurus delivered Italy; but the danger 
which Rome had incurred determined the emperor to 
surround it with a strong wall. He was less fortunate 
against the Goths. A treaty abandoned to them Dacia, 
whose inhabitants he transported into Moesia. The Danube 
again became the boundary of the empire. 

Tranquillity reestablished on that frontier, he marched 
to the East (273) to encounter Zenobia, queen of PpJmyra. 
This x^rincess, celebrated for her courage and her rare intel- 
ligence, dreamed of forming a vast Oriental empire. He 
wrested from her Syria, Egypt and a part of Asia Minor, 
defeated her near Antioch and Emesa and besieged her in 
Palmyra, her capital, where she had taken refuge. When 
the resources of the city were exhausted, Zenobia fled on a 
dromedary toward the Euphrates but was captured and 
taken to Aurelian. Her principal minister, the sophist 
Longinus, whose treatise on the Siiblime we still possess, 
was suspected of being the author of an offensive letter sent 
by Zenobia to Aurelian and was put to death. The emperor 
reserved the queen to adorn his triumph and afterward 
assigned her a splendid villa at Tibur. In the West, Tetri- 
cus, who had usurped Gaul, Spain and Britain, himself 
betrayed his army and passed over to the side of Aurelian, 
who appointed him governor of Lucania. 

Delivered from foreign troubles Aurelian tried to restore 
order in the administration and discipline in the army. 
Desirous of occupying the restless minds of the legions he 
was preparing an expedition against the Persians, when his 
secretary, accused of extortion and afraid of punishment, 
had him assassinated (275). The soldiers, ashamed of hav- 
ing permitted the murder of their glorious chieftain, forced 
the senate to choose an emperor. It appointed the aged 
Tacitus, who died after six months. 

The soldiers then proclaimed Probus, who immediately 
hastened to Gaul, which had been invaded by the Alemanni. 
He recaptured sixty towns, followed the enemy across the 
Rhine and pursued them beyond the I^eckar. The Germans 



158 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 276-285. 

delivered to him 16,000 of their young warriors, whom 
he enrolled, though dispersing them among his troops. 
In Illyricum he routed the Sarmatse ; in Thrace the Getse ; 
in Asia Minor the brigands of Isauria and Pamphylia; 
in Egypt the Blemyes, who had seized Coptos. Narses, 
king of Persia, alarmed by these successes, sued for peace. 
On his return through Thrace Probus established on the 
lands of the empire 100,000 Bastarnse, just as he had 
already established Germans in Britain and Franks on 
the shores of the Pontus Euxinus. He was preparing to 
march against the Persians when the hard labor which he 
imposed upon his soldiers, compelling them to plant vine- 
yards and drain marshes, caused a revolt in which he 
perished (282). The next day the soldiers mourned him. 
They chose the prefect of the guards. Cams, who bestowed 
the title of Caesar on his two sons, Carinus and Numerianus. 
The elder received the government of the West. The 
younger after a victory over the Goths and Sarmatse fol- 
lowed his father to the East. Carus captured Seleucia and 
Ctesiphon but died suddenly, and Numerianus hastened to 
treat with the Persians. As he was leading the legions back 
to the Bosphorus, he was killed by his father-in-law Arrius 
Aper (284). Five days later under the walls of Chalcedon 
the soldiers proclaimed the Dalmatian Diocletian, who slew 
Aper with his own hand before the eyes of the whole army. 
Carinus endeavored to overthrow the new emperor, but he 
was slain in battle near Margus in Moesia (285). 



A.D. 285-2-J3.] DIOCLETIAN AND VONSTANTINE 159 



XIII 

DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE. CHRISTIANITY 
(385-337) 

Diocletian (285-305). The Tetrarchy. — Forty-five em- 
perors had already worn the purple. Of this number 
twenty-nine, not to mention the thirty tyrants, had been 
assassinated. Four or five others had perished by violence. 
Only eleven or twelve had met natural deaths. Such was 
the organization of supreme power in the Koman Empire! 

Diocletian imposed upon himself the double task of rees- 
tablishing order at home and security on the frontiers. 
While the tyranny of the governors of Gaul drove the 
peasants of that province to revolt, the Alemanni crossed 
the Danube and ravaged Ilha^tia; the Saxons pillaged the 
coasts of Britain and Gaul 5 the Franks went as far as Sicily 
to plunder Syracuse, and Carausius, on being ordered to 
arrest those pirates, caused himself to be proclaimed em- 
peror in Britain (287). Alarmed at this critical situation 
Diocletian took as colleague Maximianus, one of his former 
comrades in arms (285), who assumed the surname of Her- 
culius as Diocletian had assumed that of Jovius. Disorder 
and invasion threatening everywhere, the two August! as- 
sociated Avith themselves two inferior rulers, the Caesars 
Galerius and Constantius Chlorus (293). 

In the partition of the empire Diocletian kept the East 
and Thrace; Galerius had the Danubian provinces; Max- 
imianus Italy, Africa and Spain, with Mauritania; Con- 
stantius Gaul and Britain. The ordinances issued by each 
prince were valid in the provinces of his colleagues. Dio- 
cletian remained the supreme head of the state and by his 
skill and conciliatory spirit maintained harmony among 
princes who were already rivals. He was the first Eoman 
emperor to surround the throne with all the pomp of an 
Asiatic court. He adopted a diadem, clothed himself in 
silk and gold, and compelled all, who obtained permission to 



160 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 294-303. 

approach, to adore on their knees the imperial divinity and 
majesty. He began to establish that regulated hierarchy 
so necessary in a monarchical administration to protect the 
prince from military revolutions, and also that despotism 
of the court, that seraglio government, which slays public 
spirit and makes service rendered to the person of the prince 
more esteemed than service rendered to the state. But suc- 
cessful wars justified the measures of Diocletian. 

In the East, the Persians had driven a partisan of the 
Romans from the Armenian throne and were threatening 
Syria. Galerius marched against them. A defeat \v!il ',h 
he suffered was gloriously redeemed, and Narses ced^d 
Mesopotamia, five provinces beyond the Tigris and the su- 
zerainty of Armenia and Iberia at the foot of the Caucasus 
(297). This was the most glorious treaty which the empire 
had yet signed. Diocletian erected numerous fortifications 
there to preserve the conquest. At the other extremity of 
the Roman world, Gonstantius, after having expelled the 
Franks from Gaul and Batavia, made a descent on Britain 
and vanquished the usurper Alectus (296) who had suc- 
ceeded Carausius. 

Tranquillity having been everywhere restored, Diocletian 
sowed discord among the barbarians. He armed Goths and 
Vandals, Gepidae and Burgundiones, against each other. 
Then he repaired all the fortifications on the frontiers and 
constructed new posts. In these few years the empire re- 
gained a formidable footing. These successes were cele- 
brated by a splendid triumph, the last which Rome beheld 
(303). 

Unfortunately Diocletian was persuaded by Galerius to 
order a cruel persecution of the church. A conflagration, 
which burst out in the imperial palace and with which the 
Christians were charged, increased his wrath. Through- 
out the empire, except in the provinces where Constantius 
Clilorus reigned, the victims were hunted down and tortured. 

Shortly afterward Diocletian grew weary of power and 
abdicated at Kicomedia. Maximianus unwillingly followed 
his example and laid down the diadem the same day at 
Milan. The former chief of the Roman world retired to a 
magnificent villa, which he had built near Salona on the 
Dalmatian coast, and passed his old age in peaceful pursuits. 
One day when Maximianus was urging him to reascend the 
throne, he replied: "If you could only see the splendid 



A.D. 303-313.] DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE 161 

vegetables which I raise myself, you would not talk to me 
of such worries." He died there in 313. The ruins of his 
palace are still to be seen. 

New Emperors and New Civil Wars (303-323). — Galerius 
and Constantius assumed the title of Augustus and chose 
two new Csesars. These were Maximinus, who received 
the government of Syria and Egypt, and Severus, who had 
Italy and Africa and who became Augustus after the death 
of Constantius. Constantine, the son of this last prince, 
whom a brilliant destiny awaited, succeeded his father with 
the title of Csesar. 

The scheme of Diocletian, apparently so cleverly con- 
trived to prevent usurpation by sharing the power in advance 
with a few ambitious men and rendering the supreme au- 
thority almost everywhere present, was in reality imprac- 
ticable. This empire, so vast and now so menaced, could 
be held together for a moment by a firm and experienced 
hand like that of Constantine or Diocletian, but ultimate 
dismemberment was sure. Eome herself gave the signal 
for new wars. Incensed at the desertion in which the new 
emperors left her, she bestowed the title of Augustus upon 
Maxentius, son of Maximianus (306), who took his father 
as his colleague. Thus the empire had six masters at once : 
the two Augusti, Galerius and Severus; the two Caesars, 
Constantine and Maximinus ; and the two usurpers, Maxen- 
tius and Maximianus. Severus was the first to fall, van- 
quished and slain by Maximianus. The latter was the next 
to disappear, banished by his son and put to death by his 
son-in-law Constantine, whom he was attempting to over- 
throw (310). In the following year Galerius died in con- 
sequence of his debauches. Maxentius succumbed in turn 
to the blows of his brother-in-law, Constantine, near the 
Milvian Bridge which sx3ans the Tiber. For this expedi- 
tion Constantine had gained the support of Christianity by 
placing the cross upon his standards (312). 

Licinius, the successor of Galerius, had at the same time 
vanquished Maximinus who took poison (313). Thus the 
empire had now only two masters, Licinius in the East and 
Constantine in the West. This was one too many for these 
ambitious and perfidious princes, who sought each other's 
destruction. Licinius fomented a conspiracy against his 
rival. The latter in reply declared war, defeated his enemy 
and imposed upon him an onerous peace. 



162 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 323. 

This peace lasted nine years, during which Constantine 
introduced order into the administration and gained glory 
and power by a victory over the Goths, 40,000 of whom en- 
tered his service under the name of Foederati. Under pre- 
text of protecting the Christians, Constantine attacked his 
colleague and took him prisoner after two victories. He 
stripped him of the purple promising that he would respect 
his life, but some time afterward put him to death (323). 

Christianity. — Pagan morality had risen to a great height 
with Seneca, Lucan, Persius, Epictetus and Marcus Aure- 
lius. The activity of the philosophers had some effect 
upon the intellect. But the brilliancy with which certain 
intellects still shine in our eyes prevents our seeing the 
state of spiritual infancy m which the greater part of the 
human race then lay. For it the fairest doctrines wrought 
by human reason remained without effect, because they 
were not sustained by creeds born of faith alone. The phi- 
losophers talked grandly of their scorn for fortune, pain 
and death; but they knew little concerning the life to come 
or the pains and rewards in store. Their haughty virtue 
suited hopeless wise men, like some of those Roman nobles 
who, having lost the dignity of the citizen, had taken refuge 
in the dignity of the man. For the masses such marvels 
were required as impress the imagination and impose cer- 
tainty without being understood. 

Credo quia absurdum, Tertullian says. Religion alone 
can provide those beliefs with which reason has nothing to 
do. Placed between Egypt and Persia, that is to say, be- 
tween the two countries which have professed the most 
ardent faith in a life to come, Judsea had finally added to 
the grand Semitic idea of divine unity the idea of the 
resurrection and of the judgment of the dead. The simple 
purity of the parables of Jesus, his invincible faith in God 
and in his justice, his teaching, which devoted itself to 
ardent charity for all the suffering and wretched, went to 
the heart of the lower classes. Meanwhile the Fathers and 
the Doctors, constructing with Platonic ideas the most 
rational and hence the most philosophical system of meta- 
physics which the world had ever known, won gifted minds 
to the cause of the new Gospel. 

Jesus was born five years before our era in the town of 
Bethlehem in the midst of Jews who, overwhelmed with 
misery, awaited the advent of the Messiah promised by their 



A.D. 323.] DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE 163 

prophets. In the fifteenth year of Tiberius he began to 
journey throughout Judsea, teaching love of God and man, 
purity and justice, the reward of the good and the punish- 
ment of the bad. The Pharisees, the strict sectaries of the 
Mosaic law, caused the holy victim of humanity to be con- 
demned and nailed to the cross. After the Passion the 
apostles dispersed among the provinces where many Jewish 
colonies had been established. The Church welcomed a mul- 
titude of pagans who were disgusted with their marble 
gods and many slaves and miserable people, who at last 
heard a human voice whisper in their ears words of con- 
solation and hope. In the time of Nero there were already 
enough Christians in Rome to excite persecution. Some 
suffered under Domitian. A larger number were con- 
demned under Trajan. That emperor forbade search being 
made after them but, applying the ancient decrees of the 
senate, he punished whoever were convicted of holding 
secret meetings or of showing contempt for imperial au- 
thority by refusing to sacrifice to the gods, the worship of 
whom the emperor as pontif ex maximus was bound to protect. 
Nevertheless as the Church grew her doctrines became 
better known. The pagans set up in opposition the pre- 
tended miracles of Vespasian and of Apollonius of Tyana, 
philosopher and wonder-worker. They also tried to purify 
paganism, thereby rendering it less unworthy of contending 
with the religion of Christ. They introduced into their wor- 
ship mysterious forms, such as initiations and expiations, 
calculated to impress the popular imagination. These inno- 
vations did not succeed in preventing men from embracing 
a doctrine which was both more simple and mild. Chris- 
tianity encountered another danger. Like philosophy it 
had its different schools or heresies. The four Gospels, the 
Epistles, the Apostles' Creed, maintained union, and Aris- 
tides and Justin presented to Hadrian and Antoninus two 
Apologies, which gained for the believers a little repose. 
But the sophists induced Marcus Aurelius to decree fresh 
persecutions in which Justin, Polycarp and many others 
were martyred. The Christians were generally tranquil 
until Severus, a rude disciplinarian, took alarm at their 
secret assemblies and ordered a persecution (199-204) to 
which the sympathetic tolerance of Alexander Severus put 
a stop. Under Decius the calamities of the empire were 
attributed to the wrath of the gods on account of Christian- 



164 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 323. 

ity, and the last persecution, that of Diocletian or rather 
of G-alerius, deserved to be called the era of martyrclom 
(303-312). It was all the more severe because the Chris- 
tians were then very numerous in the empire. Constantine 
determined to make himself the head of this increasing 
party, and to this resolution owed his victory. 

In his expedition against Maxentius (312) he declared 
himself the protector of the new faith. The following year 
he published at Milan an edict of toleration. As long as 
Licinius lived Constantine used discretion with the pagans. 
Beginning with the year 321 he granted the Church the 
right to receive donations and legacies. He repaid the 
assistance which it had afforded him against his last rival 
by lavishing upon it at the expense of the state property 
which he guaranteed to it in perpetual possession. He 
transferred to the Christian priests all the privileges which 
the pontiffs of paganism enjoyed, that is to say, the right 
of asylum for their temples, and for themselves exemption 
from public service, statute labor and imposts. Even the 
humblest ecclesiastic could not be put to torture, and rest 
on Sunday was prescribed, a great boon to the slaves. 

To multiply conversions he made it plain in what quarter 
imperial favors were to be found, bestowing offices on Chris- 
tians and privileges on the cities which overturned the pagan 
altars. On the other hand he tried to destroy paganism by 
frequent exhortations to his peoples, and afterward when 
triumphant Christianity no longer feared dangerous tumults, 
by severe ordinances which in many places closed the tem- 
ples and overthrew the idols, without however shedding 
the blood of those who remained attached to the ancient 
worship. The Council of Nicsea, convoked by Constantine 
in 323, finally drew up the creed of Christianity. When 
it had dispersed, the emperor wrote to all the churches 
" that they were to conform to the will of God as expressed 
by the Council." 

Reorganization of the Imperial Administration. — The 
revolution had been accomplished in the religious order. 
He completed it in the political order. Diocletian had 
only outlined the organization which was destined to put 
an end to military revolutions. Constantine resumed this 
enterprise. The first thing he did was to abandon Kome, 
still filled with her gods with whom he- wished nothing to 
do, and to found another capital on the banks of the Bos- 



A.D. 330.] DIOCLETIAN AND COiYSTANTINE 165 

phorus between Europe and Asia. Constantinople rose 
upon the site of Byzantium, far enough from the eastern 
frontiers to have small fear of hostile attack, while suffi- 
ciently near them to assure their being better watched and 
defended. The site was so well chosen that for ten cen- 
turies every invasion passed her by. In 330 Constantine 
inaugurated the new city as capital of the empire. He es- 
tablished a senate, tribes and curiae. He erected a Capitol, 
consecrated not to the Olympian gods, now dethroned and 
dead, but to learning. He built palaces, aqueducts, baths, 
porticoes and eleven churches. It was like Eome a seven- 
hilled city and divided into fourteen regions. Gratuitous 
distributions of corn were made. Egypt sent thither her 
grain and the provinces their statues and finest monu- 
ments. Rome abandoned by her emperor and by her 
wealthiest families, who went away to establish themselves 
near the court, " gradually became isolated in the centre of 
the empire; and, while hghting went on around her, sat 
in the shadow of her name awaiting her ruin." 

The empire was divided into four prefectures and these 
again into thirteen dioceses. The enormous size of the 
provinces had often inspired their governors with the idea 
of mounting higher, even to the imperial power. So the 
twenty provinces of Augustus were cut up into the 116 
provinces of Constantine. A numerous body of adminis- 
trators, graded in a lengthy hierarchy, was interposed be- 
tween the people and the emperor, whose will, transmitted 
by the ministers to the praetorian prefects, passed from 
the latter to the presidents of the dioceses and descended 
through the provincial governors to the cities. At the 
head of this hierarchy seven great officers formed the im- 
perial ministry: the Count of the Sacred Chamber or 
Grand Chamberlain; the Master of Offices or Minister of 
State, who directed the household of the emperor and the 
police of the empire ; the Quaestor of the Palace, a sort of 
Chancellor; the Count of the Sacred Largesses or Minister 
of Einance; the Count of the Private Domain; the Count 
of the Domestic Cavalry; and the Count of the Domestic 
Infantry. The two latter were chiefs of the emperor's 
guards. Add to these officials the throng of inferior agents 
who encumbered the palace and were more numerous, says 
Libanius, than the swarming flies in summer. 

The four praetorian prefects of the East, Illyricum, Italy 



166 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 330. 

and Gaul had no longer any military command, but tliey 
published the emperor's decrees, made assessments, super- 
intended the collection of taxes and sat as appellate judges 
over the chiefs of the diocese. Their rich appointments 
and their numerous staff made them resemble four kings of 
secondary rank commanding the governors of the dioceses 
and of the provinces. 

The Masters of Cavalry and Infantry had under their 
orders the Military Counts of the provinces. 

Diocletian had already surrounded himself with the 
splendor of the Asiatic courts in order to exalt the majesty 
of the prince. Constantine imitated his example. The 
posts of the imperial court conferred upon those invested 
with them titles of personal but not transmissible nobility. 
Tlie consuls, the prefects and the seven ministers were 
called the illustres; the proconsuls, the vicars, the counts 
and the dukes were spectabiles; the former consuls and the 
presidents were clarissimi. There were also perfectissimi 
and egregii. The princes of the imperial house bore the 
title of nobilissimi. 

This divine hierarchy, as in official language the army of 
functionaries surrounding and concealing the sacred person 
of the emperor was called, added to the brilliancy of the 
court without increasing the strength of the government. 
Salaries Avere required for this immense staff, who took 
much greater pains to please the prince than to labor for 
the public good. The expenses of administration increased 
and taxes increased with them while poverty was already 
draining the richest provinces. Then between the treasury 
and the taxpayer began a war of ruse and violence, which 
fretted the people and extinguished the last remnants of 
patriotism. 

The free institutions of former days still lived in the 
municipal system of government. Each city had its own 
senate or curia, composed of curiales or proprietors of at 
least fifteen acres of land, who deliberated on municipal 
matters and from their own number elected magistrates to 
administer affairs. It had also its duumvirs who presided 
over the curia, watched over the interests of the city and 
judged law cases of minor importance; an sedile; a curator 
or steward; a tax collector; irenarchs or police commis- 
sioners ; scribes and notaries. Beginning with the Emperor 
Valentinian I each had a defensor, or sort of tribune, 



A.D. 3^50.] DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE 167 

elected by the city to defend its interests with the gov- 
ernor or prince. 

But the curiales, charged with collecting the tax, guaran- 
teed its payment with their own property. Thus their 
condition became more and more wretched. They sought 
escape by taking refuge in the privileged bodies of the 
clergy or army, but were thrust back by force into the 
curia, where at their death their sons were to take their 
place. Their exemption from torture and from certain 
ignominious penalties was only slight compensation. Thus 
the number of the curiales was already diminishing in the 
cities. 

The imposts for which they were resx^onsible were very 
heavy. In the first place there was the indiction or land- 
tax, which was assessed according to the fortune of each 
person as indicated in the register drawn up every fifteen 
years or cycle of indictions ; then the twentieth of inheri- 
tances ; the hundredth of the proceeds of auction sales ; the 
poll-tax, paid by non-landholders and for slaves ; the customs 
dues; and lastly the chrysargyron, levied every four years 
on petty commerce and petty industry. The aurum coro- 
narium, formerly voluntary when the cities sent crowns of 
gold to consuls or emperors, had become an obligatory tax. 

These charges pressed all the heavier on small or moder- 
ate fortunes since they fell upon the rich lightly or not at 
all. The nobilissimi, the patricii, the illustres, the spec- 
tabiles, the clarissimi, the egregii, all the staff of the palace, 
all the courtiers and the clergy, were exempt from the 
heaviest of the imposts, which fell wholly upon the curiales. 
The third class, that of simple freemen comprising those 
who owned less than fifteen acres, the merchants and arti- 
sans, were no less unfortunate. The corporations which 
the artisans of the cities had formed had, especially since 
the time of Alexander Severus, become prisons from which 
exit was prohibited. AVhile destroying industry, the gov- 
ernment supposed it could in this way force men to labor. 
In the rural districts the petty proprietors, despoiled by 
the violence and craft of the great or by the invasions of 
the barbarians, were reduced to becoming the dependents 
of the rich. Thus attached to the soil, they were deprived 
of the greater part of the rights though not of the name of 
freemen. The slaves alone gained in the midst of all these 
miseries. Stoic philosophy and afterwards Christianity had 



168 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 330. 

somewhat liumanized ideas and laws concerning tliem. 
At last tliey were regarded as men. They were authorized 
to dispose more freely of their savings, and it was forbidden 
to kill or torture them or to separate families when they 
were sold. As freemen were abased and slaves exalted, a 
new condition began to take form in serfdom of the soil. 
This was preferable to slavery, but the discouraged freeman 
ceased to work. Population diminished, and it became 
necessary to repopulate with barbarians the abandoned 
provinces. 

The real army whose duty it was to repel invasion was 
now composed only of barbarians, mainly Germans, to whom 
the guardianship of the frontiers was imprudently confided. 
The legions, reduced from 6000 to 1500 men each so that 
their commanders might be less ambitious, garrisoned the 
cities of the interior. The palatines, who formed the em- 
peror's private guard, were the best paid and most honored. 
Otherwise there was the same system in the army as in 
civil life, of servitude and privilege, which repelled every 
man of value from the profession of arms. The recruits 
were obtained from the dregs of society or among the vaga- 
bonds of those barbarian nations who were soon to dictate 
the law. Sense of military honor did not exist. The sol- 
diers were branded like galley slaves. Thus in spite of its 
133 legions, its arsenals, its magazines, its magnificent 
belt of fortifications along the Khine, the Main, the Dan- 
ube, the Euphrates and the desert of Arabia, the empire 
was about to be assailed by despised enemies. 

If then the new state of things elevated the classes 
formerly humble as the slave, tlie woman, the child, it 
on the other hand degraded whatever had been strong and 
proud as the freeman or citizen. As soldiers were want- 
ing, so were writers and artists. Nothing great could issue 
from the schools, which Valentinian was to reorganize. 
They had only sophists and rhetoricians like Libanius, or 
scribblers of light verses and of epithalamia like Claudian. 
Literature and art, still closely linked with paganism, fell 
with the creed whose followers were soon to be found only 
in rural districts. 

Faith and life, withdrawing from the old worship and 
the old society, passed to those that were new. Christian- 
ity had developed and received form in the fires of perse- 
cution. It haa ascended the throne with Constantine, who 



A.D. 323-337.] DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE 169 

heaped privileges, immunities and wealth upon the Church. 
Thus an influence was added to that which it already pos- 
sessed through its young and ardent faith, its proselyting 
spirit and the genius of its leaders. Even heresy had 
served to strengthen it. From its bosom sprang forth a 
lofty, passionate, active literature, represented by Ter- 
tullian, Saint Athanasius, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine, 
Saint Gregory of Nazianzen, Lactantius, Salvian and many 
more. Fifteen great councils held in the fourth century 
bore witness to its activity, and were already regulating its 
doctrine, its discipline and its ecclesiastical hierarchy. 
Though empire and ancient social order crumble away, the 
Church will survive. It will welcome the barbarians to its 
embrace, sending to the Dacian Goths an Arian bishop 
Ulphilas, to translate the Bible into their dialect, and 
other missionaries to convert the Burgundians. 

Last Years of Constantine (323-337). — These three mighty 
facts — the establishment of Christianity as the dominant 
religion of the empire, the foundation of Constantinople 
and the administrative reorganization — All the reign of 
Constantine. From his defeat of Licinius in 323 to his 
death in 337, we find nothing in his personal history except 
the bloody tragedies of the imperial palace, in which by his 
orders his son Crispus, his empress Fausta and the son of 
Licinius, a child of twelve, were put to death. Embassies 
of Blemmyes, Ethiopians and Indians, a treaty with Sapor 
II, who promised to ameliorate the condition of the Chris- 
tians in Persia, and two successful expeditions against the 
Goths and the Sarmatse (332), caused all these domestic mis- 
fortunes to be forgotten. A few days before expiring Con- 
stantine was baptized. 



170 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 337-361. 



XIV 

CONSTANTIUS. JULIAN. THEODOSIUS 

Constantius (337). — Constantine committed the mistake 
of dividing the empire between his three sons and several 
of his nephews, without deciding upon a definitive dismem- 
berment. This procedure caused fresh wars and fresh 
crimes. First of all the soldiers massacred his nephews 
with the exception of Gallus and Julian. The eldest of his 
sons, Constantine II, perished in battle against one of his 
brothers (340) who himself was killed (350) by the Frank 
Magnentius. Constantius, who had to check the Persians 
in the East and to combat a usurper in the West, appointed 
his cousin Gallus as Caesar and intrusted to him the war 
against Sapor. Magnentius killed himself on being de- 
feated in Pannonia (351), whereupon Gaul, Spain and Brit- 
ain submitted. Thus all the provinces were once more 
united under one master, but they were no better governed. 
The palace was distracted by the intrigues of women, eu- 
nuchs and courtiers, and the empire by the quarrels of 
Arianism and by the continued inroads of barbarians. 
From false reports Constantius believed that Gallus, the 
Caesar of the East, was preparing to revolt. The young 
prince, recalled from Asia by flattering promises, was taken 
to Pola in Istria and beheaded. His brother Julian was 
spared. Exiled to Athens, he was able to fully gratify his 
taste for study and to become initiated into the Platonic 
doctrines. But imperial authority must be present on all 
the menaced frontiers. So after fourteen months it became 
necessary to recall Julian and intrust to him, as Csesar, the 
defence of Gaul, now invaded by the Franks and the Ale- 
manni. He vanquished the barbarians in the battle of 
Strasburg (357), expelled them from all the country com- 
prised between Basle and Cologne, crossed the Rhine and 
brought back a great number of captive Gauls and legiona- 
ries as prisoners. His skilful administration rendered him 
as popular with the citizens as his victories had done with 
the soldiers. Constantius grew uneasy and wished to take 



A.D. 361-363,] CONSTANTIUS. JULIAN. THEODOSIUS 111 

away his troops, but they mutinied and proclaimed him 
Augustus. This was a declaration of war. A bold and 
rapid march had already brought Julian to the heart of 
Illyricum, when Constantius died (361). 

Julian (361). — Julian, a conqueror without a combat, 
abjured Christianity and received the surname of the Apos- 
tate. He publicly professed the ancient faith and reopened 
the temples. He strangely misunderstood the society which 
he was called to rule by attempting to restore life to the 
dead. Had he lived longer, he would doubtless have cruelly 
expiated this unintelligent return to the past. Neverthe- 
less he did not summon the aid of violence to effect the 
triumph of reaction. He promulgated an edict of toleration, 
which permitted the sacrifices forbidden by Constantius, 
and recalled the exiled members of all religious parties ; 
but he must be reproached for one astute order which for- 
bade Christians to teach belles-lettres. The reign of Con- 
stantius had been incessantly troubled by the contentions 
of the Arians and the Orthodox. Alexandria and Constanti- 
nople were the principal theatres of this struggle. These 
quarrels assisted Julian in his attempted restoration of 
paganism. Also the sect of the Donatists was devastating 
Africa at the same time. The Circumcelliones, separating 
from the Donatists, wished to establish social equality. They 
liberated debtors, broke the chains of the slaves and divided 
the property of the masters. Hence arose a savage war. 

Austere himself, he lay claim to the simplicity of a rigid 
stoic. He was sometimes harsh toward others. Thus to 
judge faithless officers, after .his accession he established a 
tribunal which was charged with revising unjust decisions. 
Once when severity would have been justified he displayed 
a patience which does him honor. Anxious to avenge upon 
the Persians the long injuries of the empire, he had reached 
Syria with his army. At Antioch the inhabitants, zealous 
Christians, loudly ridiculed him for his untrimmed beard 
and shabby clothing and even proceeded to insult. The 
emperor could xmnish, but the philosopher contented him- 
self with replying by the Misopogon, a satire on their effem- 
inate habits. At the head of 60,000 men he penetrated 
to Ctesiphon, where he crossed the Tigris and burned 
his fleet that his soldiers might have no other hope than 
victory. But misled by traitors and in need of provisions, 
he was obliged to fall back upon Gordyene to which a vie- 



172 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 363-378. 

tory opened the road. In a second combat lie fell severely 
wounded, and died conversing with his friends concerning 
the immortality promised to the just. Only thirty -two 
years of age, he had sat upon the throne less than twenty- 
three months (363). 

Jovian (363). Valentinian and Valens (364). — The army 
proclaimed Jovian. By a disgraceful treaty he abandoned 
to Sapor the supremacy in Armenia and the five provinces 
beyond the Tigris with many strongholds which served as 
bulwarks to the empire. He died seven months afterward 
(364). The generals agreed to proclaim Valentinian, who 
gave the East to his brother Valens, and established himself 
at Paris whence he could observe the Germans. He sowed 
discord among the barbarians, set the Burgundians against 
the Alemanni and after conquering several of those turbu- 
lent tribes rebuilt the fortresses which guarded the pas- 
sages of the Ehine. In his internal government, he was 
stern even to cruelty. Death was the punishment for all 
offences. But he showed himself tolerant in religious af- 
fairs. Unfortunately for the empire this valiant chief died 
in an expedition against the Quadi (375). His son Gratian 
who succeeded abandoned to his younger brother, Valenti- 
nian II, the prefectures of Italy and Illyricum. 

In the East Valens less wise had entered into religious 
quarrels instead of reorganizing the army. A great peril 
threatened. A horde of Huns, belonging to the Mongol 
race of Eastern Asia, had crossed the Ural, subjugated the 
Alani and driven back upon the Danube the Goths, who 
stretched out supplicating hands to the emperor (375). 
Valens, whose pride was flattered, forgot his prudence 
and welcomed this host of 200,000 fighting men. After- 
ward they rose against him, and Valens near Adrianople 
experienced a defeat more disastrous than that of Cannae 
(378). Barely a third of the Roman army escaped. The 
wounded emperor perished in a hut to which the barbarians 
set fire. The whole country was horribly ravaged. Some 
bands of Saracens, summoned from Asia, saved Constanti- 
nople. Those children of the southern deserts found them- 
selves for the first time in hand-to-hand combat with the 
men of the north whom they were destined to encounter 
three and a half centuries later at the other extremity of 
the Mediterranean. 

Theodosius (378). — At this very time Gratian was fight- 



A.P. 378-304.] CONSTANTIUS. JULIAN. THEODOSIUS 173 

ing the Alemamii near Colmar, while the empire of the 
East was without a head. To replace his uncle he chose a 
skilful general, Theodosius, who reorganized the army and 
restored the soldiers' courage by affording them the oppor- 
tunity of fighting petty engagements in which he took care 
that they should have the advantage. He allowed no for- 
tress to fall into the hands of the enemy and diminished their 
numbers by provoking desertions. At last without having 
won a victory he forced the Goths to make a treaty (382). 
In reality Theodosius gave them what they wished. He 
established them in Thrace and Moesia with the duty of 
defending the passage of the Danube. Forty thousand of 
their warriors were admitted to the imperial ranks. 

In Gaul Gratian had been overthrown by the usurper 
Maximus (383) who, taking advantage of the Arian troubles 
in Italy, crossed the Alps and forced Valentinian II to take 
refuge with Theodosius. This prince brought him back to 
Italy after a victory over Maximus, who was put to death 
by his own soldiers in Aquileia. He gave him as his prin- 
cipal minister the Frank Arbogast, who had just freed Gaul 
from the Germans, but who filled all the civil and military 
offices with barbarians. After the departure of Theodosius, 
Valentinian wished delivery from this tutelage, but a few 
days later he was found strangled in his bed (392). 

Arbogast threw the purple over the shoulders of a depend- 
ent of his own, the pagan orator Eugenius, and tried to 
rally to his cause what pagans remained. This imprudent 
conduct roused the Christians against him. A single battle 
near Aquileia ended his ephemeral domination. Eugenius 
was made prisoner and put to death. Arbogast killed him- 
self (394). This time the victor retained his conquest. 
This victory was also the triumph of orthodoxy. Theodo- 
sius forbade under severe penalties the worship of the pagan 
gods. He forbade the bestowal of honors on heretics, nor 
could they dispose of their property by will. On the other 
hand he made wise regulations in the effort to heal some of 
the evils infesting this moribund society. He honored the 
last days of the empire by exhibiting upon the throne those 
virtues which the people had rarely beheld there. 

The inhabitants of Thessalonica during a riot had killed 
the governor and several imperial officers. Theodosius 
gave orders which cost 7000 persons their lives. This 
massacre excited a sentiment of horror throughout the em- 



174 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 395-476. 

pire. When he presented himself some time later at the 
doors of the cathedral of Milan, Saint Ambrose in the pres- 
ence of all the people reproached him with his crime and 
forbade him to enter the church. The emperor accepted the 
public penance which the saintly bishop thus imposed in 
the name of God and outraged humanity. At his death he 
divided the empire between his two sons, Arcadius and 
Honorius (395). This final partition corresx3onded with the 
real state of affairs, for the Adriatic separated two languages 
and almost two religions. Constantinople, Greek-Orthodox 
though so often Arian, and Eome, Latin and Catholic, had 
each desired its own emperor. This separation still exists 
in the different creeds and civilizations of those two halves 
of the ancient world. 

End of the Western Empire (476). — The barbarians who 
for four centuries had remained on the defensive were now 
beginning incessant attacks. Thanks to her situation, Con- 
stantinople was almost impregnable to assault. Rome, on 
the contrary, was speedily captured. The empire of the 
West writhed for eighty years in a painful death agony, the 
chief features of which we shall find in the subsequent his- 
tory of Alaric, Attila and Genseric. Honorius died in 423. 
His nephew Valentinian III reigned miserably until 455 
and perished by assassination. Majorian, worthy of a better 
epoch, was killed by the Sueve Eicimer who bestowed the 
crown on three senators in succession. Finally a chieftain 
of the Heruli, Odoacer, put an end to the Western Empire 
(476) by deposing the last emperor Eomulus Augustus. 
Proclaimed king of Italy by his barbarians, he assigned 
them one-third of the territory of the country, and re- 
quested at Constantinople the title of patrician, thereby 
recognizing the rights of the Eastern Emperor as suzerain 
of the new kingdom. 

Summary. — The Eoman Empire fell because it had at its 
origin detestable political principles, and in its latter days a 
deplorable military organization. Taxes, constantly becom- 
ing more burdensome, and a merciless fiscal system alien- 
ated the affection of subjects whom the army no longer 
defended. A new religion, which tended to detach attention 
from the earth, did not strengthen the devotion for the pub- 
lic cause. Thus the empire was not thrown down headlong 
by a violent and unexpected blow. It collapsed because it 
could no longer live. 



A.D. 476.] CONSTANTIUS. JULIAN. THEODOSIUS 175 

The Eoman people added nothing to the heritage Greece 
had bequeathed. ISTevertheless it also left behind great 
deeds and great lessons, though belonging to another order 
of facts and ideas. Its language has been and still in a 
measure is the bond of the learned world. Its laws have 
inspired modern legislation. Its military roads, its bridges, 
its aqueducts, have made men understand the necessity of 
public works. Its administration has taught how to control 
multitudes of men. Its government has served as a model 
to the absolute monarchies which have succeeded the feudal 
system. Its municipal institutions are the source of our 
own and could still offer useful examples. Lastly it began 
the transformation of ancient slavery into serfdom. 

The barbaric kings, dazzled at the splendor shed by this 
dying empire, had at first no other idea than to continue it. 
Clovis will be a patrician of Eome. Theodoric will count 
himself the colleague of the emperor of the East. Charle- 
magne, Otho, Frederick Barbarossa, will call themselves the 
successors of Constantine. The Christianity of Jerusalem, 
become Catholicism at Eome, will be the most powerful 
government of the soul. The spiritual monarchy of the 
popes will copy and strive to replace the temporal monarchy 
of the emperors. The intellectual heirs of Ulpian and of 
Papinian will attach to feudal royalty the powers bestowed 
upon the Caesars by the lex regia. When -those royalties 
shall all have perished in their turn, ISTapoleon will assume 
a Eoman title as representative of an idea both new and old, 
the idea of the protectorate of popular interests exercised at 
Eome by the tribunes of the people, whose power, tribunicia 
potestas, the emperors had absorbed. 

Thus the history of Eome will long remain the training- 
school of the lawyer and the statesman, even as artists, 
thinkers and poets will always turn toward Greece. 




Copyright. 189B, by T. Y. Crowell ic Co. 




Engraved by Collon, Olunai. & Co., N. Y. 



HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 



^XXc 



THE BARBARIAN WORLD IN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH 
CENTURIES 

Definition of the Middle Ages. — The term Middle Ages 
indicates the period which elapsed between the ruin of the 
Roman Empire and the establishment of the great modern 
monarchies. It extends from the German invasion at the 
beginning of the fifth century to the capture of Constanti- 
nople by the Ottoman Turks ten centuries later in 1453. 

In this period, situated between ancient and modern 
times, the cultivation of arts and letters was suspended, 
although a new and magnificent architecture was developed. 
In place of the republics of antiquity and the monarchies 
of our day there grew up a special organization called 
feudalism. This domination of the feudal lords, the product 
of many centuries, was finally overthrown by Louis XI, the 
Tudors and the princes contemporary with them. Although 
there were kings in all countries, the military and ecclesias- 
tical chiefs were the real sovereigns from the ninth to the 
twelfth century. The central power* had no force, local 
powers had no overseer or guide, the frontiers had no fixed 
limits. The sovereign and owner parcelled out the territory 
into a multitude of petty states where the sentiment of 
nationality could not exist. Nevertheless above this condi- 
tion of many lords hovered the idea of Christianity repre- 
sented by the pope, and of a certain political unity represented 
by the emperor in comparison with whom all the kings of 
Europe were provincial. Thus the great wars of those times 
were religious wars, as were the crusades against the Mussul- 
mans of Palestine, the Moors of Spain, the Albigensian here- 
tics or the pagans of the Baltic, or were a struggle between 
N 177 



178 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 395. 

the two powers which aspired to rule the world, a quarrel 
between Papacy and the Empire. Hence there is a wide dif- 
ference between this period and those periods which preceded 
or followed. Hence of necessity it has a name and a place 
apart in universal history. 

The Northern Barbarians : their Habits and Religion. — 
During the military anarchy which drained the last re- 
sources of the Roman Empire, peoples, hitherto concealed 
in the depths of the north, south and east, were setting 
themselves in motion beyond its boundaries, to which they 
daily drew nearer. In the north were three layers of 
humanity, placed at intervals in the following order: 
Germans, Slavs and Turanian tribes. On the east were 
the Persians, a settled and stationary people, who had 
often made war on the empire but had no thought of 
invading it. On the south in the deserts of their great 
peninsula were the Arabs, who as yet caused no fear; and in 
the wastes of Africa the Moorish populations, who had been 
touched rather than permeated by Roman civilization. 

At the death of Theodosius (395) there was no serious 
danger except from the north. Driven forward by the 
Asiatic hordes from the banks of the Volga, the Germans 
were pressing upon the frontiers of the empire. The Suevi 
or Suabians, Alemanni and Bavarians were in the south 
between the Main and Lake Constance. The Marcomanni, 
Quadi, Heruli and the great Gothic nation controlled the 
left bank of the Danube. In the west along the Rhine 
extended the confederation of the Franks, formed as early 
as the middle of the third century, and toward the mouth 
of the Ems, the Erisii, a remnant of the Batavi. In the 
north were the Vandals, Burgundi, Rugii, Longobardi or 
Lombards; between the Elbe and the Eyder, the Angles 
and Saxons ; farther north, the Scandinavians, Jutes and 
Danes in Sweden and Denmark, whence they emerged to 
join the second invasion; and lastly in the immense plains 
of the east and at many points of the Danubian valley, the 
Slavs, who were to follow the Germanic invasion but only 
to enter into history later on, first through the Poles and 
then through the Russians. 

A spirit totally different from that of the inhabitants 
of the Roman Empire animated these barbarians. Among 
them reigned the love of individual independence, the devo- 
tion of the warrior to his chieftain and a passion for wars 



A.D. 395.] THE BARBAKIAN WORLD 179 

of adventure. As soon as the young man had received in 
the public assembly his buckler and lance, he was a warrior 
and a citizen. He immediately attached himself to some 
famous chieftain, whom he followed to battle with other 
warriors, his leudes or henchmen, ahvays ready to die in 
his behalf. The government of the Germans was simple. 
The affairs of the tribe were administered in an assembly 
in which all took part. The warriors gathered there to- 
gether in arms. The clash of shields denoted applause; 
a violent murmur, disapproval. The same assembly exer- 
cised judicial power. Each canton had its magistrate, the 
graf, and the whole nation had a konig, or king, elected 
from among the members of one special family which held 
hereditary possession of that title. For combat the war- 
riors chose the leader, or herzog, whom they wished to follow. 

The Olympus or heaven of these peoples presented a 
mixture of terrible and graceful conceptions. At the side 
of Odin, who gave victory and who by night rode through 
the air with the dead warriors ; of Donar, the Hercules of 
the Germans; and of the fierce joys of Walhalla, — ap- 
peared the goddesses Ereja and Hoi da, the Venus and the 
Diana of the north, who everywhere diffused peace and 
the arts. The Germans also adored Herta, the earth, Sunna, 
the sun, and her brother Mani, the moon, who was pursued 
by two wolves. The bards were their poets and encouraged 
them to brave death. It was their glory to die with a laugh. 

The Germans cultivated the soil but little. They pos- 
sessed no domain as private property, and every year the 
magistrates distributed to each village and each family the 
plot which they were to cultivate. They had no towns 
laut scattered earthen huts far distant from each other, 
each surrounded by the plot which the proprietor cultivated. 
Their habits were tolerably pure. Polygamy was author- 
ized only for the kings and the nobles. But drunkenness 
and bloody quarrels generally terminated their Homeric 
feasts, and they had a passion for gambling. 

Arrival of the Huns in Europe. — Behind this Germanic 
family which was destined to occupy the greater part of 
the empire, pressed two other barbarous races: the Slavs 
whose turn did not come until later, and the Huns who 
were an object of fear to the people of the west. Their 
lives were passed in enormous chariots or in the saddle. 
Their bony faces, pierced with little eyes, their broad flat 



180 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 3T5-403. 

noses, their enormous wide-spread ears and swarthy tat- 
tooed skins made them seem hardly human. At the end 
of the fourth century they had convulsed the whole bar- 
baric world and precipitated the Germans upon the Empire 
of the West. In consequence of intestine discords a part 
of the nation of the Huns, driven on toward Europe, crossed 
the Volga, carrying with them the Alani. They dashed 
themselves against the great Gothic empire in which Her- 
manric had united the three branches of the nation: the 
Ostrogoths or Oriental Goths east of the Dnieper ; the Visi- 
goths or western Goths; the Gepidae or Laggards farther 
to the north. The Ostrogoths submitted. The Visigoths 
fled toward the Danube and obtained from the Emperor 
Valens an asylum on the lands of the empire. They re- 
volted soon after against their benefactor and slew him at 
the battle of Adrianople (378). But they were arrested 
by Theodosius who established many of them in Thrace, 
where at first they faithfully defended that frontier against 
the Huns. 

Invasion of the Visigoths. Alaric. The Great Invasion 
of 406. — When at the death of Theodosius his two sons 
divided their heritage (395), Honorins received the West. 
His provinces bore the full brunt of the invasion from the 
north. In the course of half a century this empire endured 
the four terrible assaults of Alaric, Radagaisus, Genseric 
and Attila. Hardly had it fallen, when the Franks of 
Clovis wrested the finest portion from its invaders, which 
they still retain. The Visigoths under the lead of their 
king Alaric first tried their forces against the Empire of 
the East. They ravaged Thrace and Macedonia, passed 
Thermopylae where there was no longer a Leonidas, 
devastated Attica, but respected Athens, and penetrated 
into the Peloponnesus. The Vandal Stilicho, general of 
Honorins, surrounded them on Mount Pholoe, but they 
escaped. Arcadius, who reigned at Constantinople, only 
rid himself of their dangerous presence by pointing out the 
Empire of the West. They hastened thither, but found at 
Polentia in Liguria (403) the same Stilicho, who defeated 
them and forced them to evacuate Italy. Honorins, to 
celebrate this victory of his lieutenant, enjoyed a triumph 
at Rome and offered the people the last sanguinary games 
of the circus. Then he hid himself at Ravenna behind the 
marshes ^t the south of the Po, disdaining his ancient capi- 



A.D. 403-435.] THE BARBARIAN WORLD 181 

tal, and no longer daring to reside in Milan where Alaric 
had nearly surprised him. 

The ostensible consent of the empire had admitted upon 
its territory the Visigoths, who rewarded it badly. But 
now four peoples, the Suevi, Alani, Vandals and Burgundi- 
ans, at two points forced their way across the frontier. One 
of their divisions passed the Alps under Radagaisus, but 
was annihilated at Fiesole by Stilicho. Another crossed 
the Rhine (406) and for two years laid waste the whole of 
Gaul. Afterward the Burgundians founded on the banks 
of the Rhone a kingdom which Honorius recognized in 413, 
and the Alani, the Suevi and the Vandals proceeded to 
inundate Spain. The great invasion had begun. 

Capture of Rome by Alaric (410). Kingdoms of the 
Visigoths, Suevi and Vandals. — But Alaric returned to the 
charge. No longer was he confronted by Stilicho, who had 
been sacrificed to the jealousy of Honorius. He captured 
Rome, delivered it over to the fury of his barbarians who 
respected the Christian churches, and died some time later 
in Calabria at Cosenza (410). The Visigoths hollowed out 
a tomb for him in the bed of a river whose waters had been 
diverted, and then restored the natural course of the stream 
after having slain the prisoners who had done the work. 

The power of the Visigoths did not expire with Alaric. 
Notwithstanding their sack of Rome this people, who had 
been so long in contact with the empire, were specially dis- 
posed to yield to the paramount influence of Roman civiliza- 
tion. Ataulf, the brother-in-law of Alaric, and after him 
Wallia, entered the service of Honorius. In his interest 
they rescued Gaul from three usurpers who had there 
assumed the purple, and Spain from the three barbarian 
tribes which had invaded it. For his reward Wallia 
obtained a portion of Aquitania, and founded the kingdom 
of the Visigoths (419) which was to cross the Alps. Dur- 
ing the same year Hermanric organized with the remnants 
of the Suevi a kingdom in the mountains of the Asturias. 
A little later the Vandals, who had been crowded into the 
south of Spain, crossed into Africa, which was opened to 
them by the treachery of Count Boniface. They captured 
Hippo despite its long resistance, which the exhortations 
of the Bishop Saint Augustine sustained, and forced the 
Emperor Valentinian to recognize their occupancy (435). 
Genseric who made this conquest also seized Carthage 



182 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 439-486. 

(439), founded a maritime power on those shores which had 
formerly acknowledged the Carthaginian sway, and until 
his death (477) ravaged all the coasts of the Mediterranean 
with his ships. In 453 he captured Eome and for the space 
of fourteen days gave it over to pillage. 

Attila. — Four barbaric kingdoms had already risen in 
the West when Attila made his appearance. This is the 
great e^jisode in the invasion of the fifth century. What 
would have become of Europe under the Tartar domination 
of Attila, the scourge of God, who wished the grass not to 
grow where his horse's hoof had fallen ! Having put to 
death his brother Bleda, he reigned alone over the nation of 
the Huns, and held under his yoke all the peoples estab- 
lished on the banks of the Danube. He inhabited a wooden 
palace in a city in the plains of Pannonia, whence he had 
dictated laws and imposed tribute on Theodosius II, 
emperor of the East. When Genseric invited him to create 
a diversion favorable to his own designs he poured upon the 
West the immense hosts of his peoples. He traversed 
northeastern Gaul, overthrowing everything in his path, 
and laid siege to Orleans. The patrician Aetius hastened 
thither with a mixed army, in which Visigoths, Burgundi- 
ans, Franks and Saxons fought beside the Eomans against 
the new invaders. The decisive battle of Chalons (451) 
drove Attila to the other side of the Ehine. He retreated 
toward Italy. There he destroyed many cities, and among 
others Aquileia, whose inhabitants escaped to the lagoons 
of the Adriatic where they laid the foundations of Venice. 
On his return to Pannonia he died of apoplexy (453) and 
the great power of the Huns wasted away in the quarrels of 
his sons. 

The Western emperors were hardly more than playthings 
in the hands of the barbarian chiefs who commanded their 
troops. One of them, the Herule Odoacer, ended this death 
agony by assuming the title of king of Italy (476). Thus 
fell the great name of the Western Empire, an event more 
important in subsequent than in contemporary eyes, which 
had been accustomed through more than half a century to 
see the barbarian masters dispose of everything. Neverthe- 
less a remnant of the empire still existed under the patri- 
cian Syagrius at the centre of Gaul, between the Loire and 
the Somme. Ten years later that too disappeared before 
the sword of the Franks. 



A.D. 400-455.] PRINCIPAL BARBARIAN KINGDOMS 183 



II 

PRINCIPAL BARBARIAN KINGDOMS. THE EASTERN 
EMPIRE 

Barbarian Kingdoms of Gaul, Spain and Africa. — We 

have just seen how from the Loire to the Strait of Gibral- 
tar Alaric and his successors founded the kingdom of the 
Visigoths in Gaul and Spain, how Genseric built that of the 
Vandals in Africa, and lastly how Attila ravaged every- 
thing but constructed nothing. Other barbarian domina- 
tions established were those of the Burgundians, the Suevi, 
the Anglo-Saxons, the Ostrogoths and the Lombards which 
speedily passed away. 

The Burgundian kingdom, established in 413 in the val- 
leys of the Saone and Rhone with Geneva and Vienne for 
its principal cities, had eight kings of little distinction. 
Clovis rendered it tributary in 500 and his sons conquered 
it in 534. 

The kingdom of the Suevi, born at the same time, ex- 
pired a few years later. In 409 this people invaded Spain 
and seized the northwest region or Galicia. Under its 
kings Rechila and Rechiarius it seemed about to conquer 
the whole of Spain, but the Goths arrested its growth and 
reduced it to subjection (585). 

Saxon Kingdoms in England. — Britain, separated from 
the continent by the sea, had her invasion apart. Under 
the Romans three distinct peoples existed there. These 
were: in the north, in the Scotland of to-day, the Cale- 
donians or Picts and Scots whom the emperors had been 
unable to subdue ; in the east and south, the Loegrians who 
were affected by Roman civilization; on the west, beyond 
the Severn, the Cambrians or Welsh who seemed invinci- 
ble in their mountains. Abandoned by the legions (428) 
and left defenceless to the incursions of the Picts, the 
Loegrians (455) entreated assistance from the Saxons, Jutes 
and Angles, who were incessantly setting out from their 
German and Scandinavian shores to plough the seas. Two 



184 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 455-510. 

Saxon chiefs, Hengist and Horsa, routed the Picts and 
received in payment the isle of Thanet on the coast of 
Kent. But Hengist, despoiling those who had summoned 
him, took possession of the country from the Thames to 
the Channel and assumed the title of king of Kent (455). 
Thenceforth the ambition of all these pirates was to con- 
quer a settlement in Britain. The kingdom of Sussex or 
South Saxons was founded in 491 ; that of Wessex or West 
Saxons in 516; and that of Essex or East Saxons in 526. 
In 547 began the invasion of the Angles, who founded the 
kingdoms of Northumberland or the kingdom north of the 
Humber ; on the eastern British coast, of East Anglia (577) 
and Mercia (584). These three kingdoms of the Angles 
being reckoned with the four Saxon kingdoms, there were 
in Britain seven little monarchies or the Anglo-Saxon 
Heptarchy which later on formed a single state. The 
Saxons formed the basis of the present population of the 
country and to them England owes her language. 

Kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Theodoric (489-526). 
— The conquest of Italy by the Ostrogoths took place later 
and nearly coincided with the conquest of Gaul by the 
Franks. Emancipated from the yoke of the Huns by the 
death of Attila, the Ostrogoths in 475 had taken as their 
chief Theodoric, the son of one of their princes, who had 
been reared as a hostage at Constantinople. At the invita- 
tion of Zeno, emperor of the East, Theodoric conquered 
Italy from the Heruli (439-493), and showed himself the 
most truly great of the barbarian sovereigns prior to Charle- 
magne. To his kingdom of Italy by skilful negotiations 
he added Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum and Rhaetia. A 
war against the Burgundians gave him the province of Mar- 
seilles and he routed a Prankish army near Aries in 507. 
The Bavarians paid him tribute. The Alemanni appealed 
to him for aid against Clovis. Finally at the death of 
Alaric II he became the guardian of his grandson Amal- 
ric and reigned in fact over the two great branches of the 
Gothic nation, whose possessions touched each other toward 
the Rhone and who occupied the shores of the Mediterranean 
in Spain, Gaul and Italy. Family alliances united him to 
almost all the barbarian kings. 

He made an admirable use of peace. The newcomers 
needed land. Each city gave up one-third of its territory 
for distribution to the Goths. This preliminary assignment 



A.D. 510-527.] PRINCIPAL BARBARIAN KINGDOMS 185 

once made, a common law was established for the two peo- 
ples, though the Goths retained some of their peculiar 
customs. In other respects he aimed at separating the van- 
quished from the victors, reserving arms for the barbarians 
and civil dignities for the Romans. He possessed a great 
veneration for ancient imperial institutions. He consulted 
the senate of Rome and maintained the municipal system 
of government, himself appointing the decurions. Thus a 
barbarian restored to Italy a prosperity which she had lost 
under her emperors. The public edifices, aqueducts, thea- 
tres and baths were repaired, palaces and churches were 
built and the waste lands were cultivated. Companies 
were formed to drain the Pontine Marshes and those of 
Spoleto. The population increased. Theodoric, who did 
not know how to write, gathered around him the finest liter- 
ary geniuses of the time, Cassiodorus, Boethius and Bishop 
Ennodius. Himself an Arian, he respected the Catholics 
and confirmed the immunities of the churches. Yet the 
close of his reign was saddened by threats of persecution in 
reprisal for what the Eastern emperor was inflicting on the 
Arians, and by the torture of Boethius and of the prefect 
Symmachns, unjustly accused of conspiracy. He died in 
526 and his kingdom survived him only a few years. 
Thus too passed rapidly away the Vandals and the Heruli, 
the Suevi and the Burgundians, the western and eastern 
Goths. They all formed part of the barbarian guard which 
first entered the empire. Roman society, incapable of de- 
fending itself, seems to have been strong enough to com- 
municate to those who came in contact with it that death 
which it bore in its own breast. 

Revival of the Eastern Empire. Justinian (527-565). — 
The ruined Empire of the West had been replaced by thir- 
teen Germanic kingdoms; those of the Burgundians, Visi- 
goths, Suevi, Vandals, Franks, Ostrogoths and of the seven 
Anglo-Saxon states. The Greek Empire alone had escaped 
invasion and remained erect in spite of its religious dis- 
cords and the general weakness of its government. The 
reign of Theodosius II, the longest which the fifth century 
presents (418-450), was really that of Pulcheria, the sister 
of the incapable emperor. It was signalized by the publi- 
cation of the Theodosian Code. Under Zeno and Anasta- 
sius Constantinople was racked by quarrels and riots on 
questions of religion. 



186 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 527-568. 

Justinian restored vigor and brilliancy to this empire. 
He preserved intact the eastern frontier and forced the 
Persians to conclude in 562, after thirty-four years of war, 
an honorable treaty. He repulsed (559) an invasion of 
Bulgarians which threatened Constantinople. In the west 
he destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals by the victories 
of Belisarius and that of the Ostrogoths by the successes 
of the eunuch Narses. While his generals were winning 
battles, his lawyers were drawing up the Code, the Digest 
or Pandects, the Institutes and the Novellce, which have 
transmitted to posterity the substance of ancient jurispru- 
dence. This reign was the glorious protest of the Eastern 
Empire and of civilization against invasion and barbarism. 
The splendor was of brief continuance. In 568 Italy was 
lost. Conquered by the Lombards, a fourteenth Germanic 
kingdom was founded, which lasted more than 200 years 
and was to fall under the blows of Charlemagne. From her 
geographic position Constantinople could not be the heir of 
Rome. The inheritance of the Western Empire was to 
belong to the Germanic race. 

As for the Eastern Empire, after that brilliant period it 
passed many gloomy days despite the talent of princes like 
Maurice and Heraclius. Thanks to her strategic situation 
Constantinople, the daughter of aged Rome, who bore on 
her brow from her very birth the wrinkles of her mother, 
alone remained standing like an isolated rock. For ten 
centuries she braved victoriously the assaults of the Mus- 
sulmans in the south and of the Slavic and Turanian tribes 
on the north. 




' T. V. Ccawell ,V Co 



EMer''«dby Cullo.,, 01....;ll. i Co., N. Y. 



A.D. 241-448.] CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 187 



III 
CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 

(481-753) 

The Franks. — In the third century before Christ the 
Germans had formed on the right bank of the Rhine two 
confederations : on the south, that of the Suevic tribes, 
who called themselves the Alemanni or men; on the 
north, that of the Salii, the Sicambri, the Bructeri, the 
Cherusci and the Catti, who took the name of Franks or 
the brave. They are first mentioned by Eoman writers in 
241 when Aurelian, then legionary tribune, defeated a body 
of Franks on the lower Rhine. Probus recaptured from 
them the Gallic cities which they had attacked on the 
death of Aurelian, and transported a colony of them to the 
Black Sea (277). A little later others crossed the Rhine, 
devastated Belgium and received from Julian authority to 
establish themselves on the banks of the Meuse which they 
had ravaged. Several of the Frankish chiefs rose to high 
positions in the empire. Thus Arbogast was the prime 
minister of Valentinian II and disposed of the purple. 

Twelve years after his death the Franks, already estab- 
lished in northern Gaul, tried to arrest the great invasion 
of 406. Failing in this they wished to obtain their share 
of these provinces which the emperor himself was aban- 
doning, and their tribes advanced into the interior of the 
country, each one under its own chieftain or king. At that 
time there were Frankish kings at Cologne, Tournay, Cam- 
brai and Therouanne. Of these kings, Clodion, chief of 
the Salian Franks of the country of Tongres or Limburg, 
is the first whose existence has been well authenticated. 
Pharamond, his reputed predecessor, is mentioned only in 
later chronicles. He captured Tournay and Cambrai, put 
to death all the Romans whom he found and advanced 
toward the Somme which he crossed ; but in the neighbor- 
hood of Sens was vanquished by the Roman general Aetius 
(448). 



188 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 448-496. 

He did not survive his defeat, Merovig his kinsman 
succeeded. He joined three years later with all the bar- 
barians quartered in Gaul and with the rest of the Romans 
in resisting the Huns. The battle of Chalons (451) against 
Attila cost the lives, it is said, of 300,000 men and rescued 
the barbarian nations encamped between the Rhine and the 
Pyrenees. 

Childeric, the son of Merovig, was expelled by the Franks 
who were disgusted at his excesses. He was replaced by 
the Roman general ^Egidius. Recalled at the end of eight 
years, he reigned over the Franks until his death and was 
interred in Tournay, where his tomb was discovered in 
1633. His son Chlodowig or Clovis was the real founder 
of the Frankish monarchy. 

Clovis. — In 481 Clovis possessed only a few districts of 
Belgium with the title of king of the Salian Franks, who 
had settled in the neighborhood of Tournay. He com- 
manded 4000 or 5000 warriors. Five years later he 
defeated near Soissons Syagrius, the son of ^gidius, who 
governed in the name of the empire the country between the 
Somme and the Loire. He forced the Visigoths among whom 
the vanquished general had taken refuge to give him up, put 
him to death and subdued the country as far as the Loire. 

In 493 he married Clotilde, daughter of a Burgundian 
king, herself an Orthodox Christian. This union had the 
happiest results for Clotilde soon converted her husband. 
As all the barbarians established in Gaul were Arians and 
hence in orthodox eyes equivalent to heretics, Clovis be- 
came the hope of the orthodox Gauls. Even before his 
conversion, Amiens, Beauvais, Paris and Rouen had opened 
their gates, thanks to the influence of their bishops. The 
Alemanni having crossed the Rhine, Clovis marched against 
them. He was on the point of being vanquished, when he 
invoked the God of Clotilde. Success seemed granted to 
his prayer, and the Alemanni were thrust back beyond that 
river and pursued into Suabia. On his return Clovis was 
bajjtized with 3000 of his men by Saint Remi, archbishop of 
Reims. As the archbishop sprinkled the holy water on the 
head of the neophyte he said to him, " Bow thy head, soft- 
ened Sicambrian. Adore what thou hast burned ; burn what 
thou hast adored." An Arian sister of Clovis was baptized 
at the same time (496). The Gallo-Roman inhabitants, 
oppressed by the Arian Burgundian s and Visigoths, thence- 



A.D. 496-511.] CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 189 

forth centred their affections and hopes in the converted 
chieftain of the Franks. All the episcopate was on his 
side. " When thou lightest," wrote to him Avitus, bishop 
of Vienne, '' we share the victory." So they aided him in 
all his enterprises. Some of his liegemen deserted, but his 
successes and above all the booty they could gain under so 
skilful a leader brought them back. 

The country between the Loire and the Somme was sub- 
jugated and Armoricum won over to his alliance. Then he 
attacked the Burgiindians (500), defeated their king Gundo- 
bad and made him pay tribute. Then one day he said to 
his soldiers, "It causes me great grief that those Arian 
Visigoths possess a part of this Gaul. Let us march with 
the help of God and after vanquishing them let us reduce 
their country to our power." The army crossed the Loire, 
by the express order of the king religiously respecting on 
its passage all the property of the churches. The Visi- 
gothic king Alaric II was beaten and slain at Vouille 
near Poitiers. That city, Saintes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, 
opened their gates and Septimania with Nimes, Beziers 
and Narbonne would have been conquered if Theodoric, 
the great head of the Ostrogoths, had not sent succor to his 
brethren of the West. On his return from this expedition 
Clovis found the ambassadors of the Emperor Anastasius 
who brought him the titles of consul and patrician with the 
purple tunic and robe. His last years were bloody. He 
slew Sigebert and Chloderic kings of Cologne, Chararic 
another petty Frankish king, Eagnachairus king of Cam- 
brai, and Benomer king of the Mans, that he might seize 
their kingdoms and treasures. He died in 511 and was 
interred in the basilica of the Holy Apostles or Saint 
Genevieve which he himself had built. His reign had 
lasted thirty years, and his life forty-five. • 

At his death the state which he founded comprised all 
Gaul except Gascogne where no Frankish troop had made 
its apj)earance, and Brittany which was controlled by 
counts or military chiefs. The Alemanni in Alsace and 
Suabia were associates in the fortunes of the Franks rather 
than subject to the authority of their king. The Burgun- 
dians after paying tribute for a time fully intended to 
refuse it in future ; and the cities of Aquitaine, feebly re- 
strained by Frankish garrisons at Bordeaux and Saintes, 
remained almost independent. 



190 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 511-571. 

As to the victorious nation united only for conquest and 
pillage it had contented itself with expelling the Visigoths 
from Aquitaine without replacing them. The war ended 
the Franks had returned with their booty to their former 
abodes between the Rhine and the Loire. Clovis himself 
had settled at Paris, a central position between the two 
rivers, whence he could more easily watch the provinces 
and his enemies. 

The Sons of Clovis (511-561). — The four sons of Clovis 
shared his territories and followers, so that each one had a 
nearly equal portion of the land to the north of the Loire 
where the Frankish nation had settled, and also a part of 
the Roman cities of Aquitaine which paid rich tributes. 
Childebert was king of Paris ; Clotaire, king of Soissons ; 
Clodimir, king of Orleans ; Thierry, king of Metz or Aus- 
trasia. 

The impulse imparted by Clovis lasted for some time. 
His sons carried their arms to Thuringia, Burgundy, Italy 
and Spain. The Alemanni and the Bavarians had recog- 
nized them as suzerains, and the Saxons paid them trib- 
ute. 

Fredegonde and Brunehaut. — Clotaire, one of the sons of 
Clovis, had reunited his father's kingdom in 558, but upon 
his death three years afterward the Frankish monarchy be- 
came again a tetrarchy by the partition of its states among 
his four sons : Caribert, king of Paris ; Grontram, of Orleans 
and Burgundy; Sigebert, of Austrasia, and Chilperic, of 
Soissons. From that time rivalry began, destined to increase 
between the eastern Franks or Austrasians and the western 
Franks or Neustrians. The former were more faithful to the 
rude manners of Germany of which they were the neigh- 
bors. The latter were more accessible to the influence of 
that Roman civilization in the midst of which they had 
settled. 

This opposition finds its first expression in the hatred of 
two women. Sigebert had married Brunehaut, the daughter 
of Athanagild king of the Visigoths, beautiful, learned and 
ambitious. Chilperic, desirous also of a royal wife, ob- 
tained the hand of Galswinthe, the sister of Brunehaut. 
Soon however he returned to his imperious concubine Fre- 
degonde, who caused her rival to be strangled and took 
her place. Brunehaut burning to avenge her sister stirred 
up Sigebert to attack Neustria. Her husband, victorious, 



A.D. 571-028.] CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 191 

was about to proclaim himself king of the Neustrians, 
when two servants of Fredegonde, "bewitched by her," 
stabbed him at the same time in the side with poisoned 
knives (575). As his son Childebert II was still a minor, 
the Austrians were governed by a mayor of the palace. 
That official was originally a mere steward of the king's 
household, chosen from among his vassals. Supported by 
other vassals, the mayors of the palace were to acquire an 
important influence to the advantage of the barbarous aris- 
tocracy, already very hostile to royalty, and were to hold 
the feeble kings in tutelage until the moment came when 
they could take their place. 

The years that followed are confused and bloody, filled 
with the turbulence of the leudes or liegemen, and above all 
with the fierce struggle between Brunehaut and Fredegonde. 
The former in the name of her children and grandchildren 
seized the power in both Austrasia and Burgundy. Her 
stern and orderly rule alienated her subjects, who proposed 
to Clotaire II, the son of Chilperic and Fredegonde, to make 
him their king if he would rid them of Brunehaut. Aban- 
doned by her troops, she and her four grandsons were capt- 
ured by Clotaire. He cut the throats of the young princes 
and had the aged queen fastened to the tail of a wild horse 
(613) which dashed her body to pieces. 

Clotaire II (584) and Dagobert (628). — Clotaire II for the 
third time established the unity of the Frankish monarchy. 
Under his reign seventy-nine bishops and many laymen took 
part in the Council of Paris, which promulgated a so-called 
perpetual constitution whereby the power of the ecclesiastical 
and secular aristocracy was greatly increased. The taxes 
imposed were abolished, the fiefs granted were declared in- 
alienable and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was extended. 

The reign of Dagobert was the most brilliant of the Mero- 
vingian line and gave to the Franks preponderance in West- 
ern Europe,. He stopped the incursions of the Venedi over 
whom a Frankish merchant had become king, opposed the 
incursions of the Slavonians into Thuringia and delivered 
Bavaria from a Bulgarian invasion. In Gaul he compelled 
the submission of the Vascons and the alliance of the Bre- 
tons whose chief had assumed the title of king. He chose 
clever ministers and won a legitimate popularity by travel- 
ling about his kingdom to administer justice in behalf of the 
small as the great. He revised the laws of the Salii, the 



192 HISTOEY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. (338-687. 

Riparii, the Alemanni and the Bavarians, encouraged com- 
merce and industry and built the Abbey of Saint Denis. 

The Sluggard Kings. The Mayors of the Palace (638-687). 
— But Dagobert carried the power of the Merovingians with 
him to the tomb. After him came the sluggard kings. 
Nevertheless royalty found a formidable champion in 
Ebroin, mayor of the palace in Neustria, who with increased 
energy resumed the struggle of Brunehaut and Dagobert 
against the leudes and their chief, Saint Leger, bishop of 
Autun. In a document he wrote, " Those men have appar- 
ently forfeited their fiefs who are convicted of infidelity to 
those from whom they hold them." Many vassals who 
seemed too independent were put to death, deprived of their 
property or banished. The Austrasian vassals made com- 
mon cause with the exiles. They deposed their Merovingian 
king and confided the power to the two mayors, Martin and 
Pepin d'Heristal, with the title of princes of the Franks. 
After the death of Ebroin they gained the battle of Testry 
and all Neustria in consequence (687). From that day 
forth Pepin d'Heristal reigned in reality though without 
assuming the title of king. His successors were to erect 
the Frankish Empire in which all the Germanic invasion 
is summed up. 



A.D. 570-610.] MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 193 



IV 

MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 

Arabia. Mohammed and the Koran. — After the German 
invasion which came from the north followed the Arab 
invasion from the south. Arabia, whose peoples then ap- 
peared for the first time on the scene of history, is a vast 
peninsula covering more than a million square miles. 
Northward it opens upon Asia through extensive deserts 
and is attached on the northwest to Africa by the Isthmus of 
Suez. Elsewhere it is surrounded by the Ked Sea, the Strait 
of Bab-el-Mandeb, the Indian Ocean, the Strait of Ormus and 
the Persian Gulf. The ancients, who had small acquaintance 
with it, divided it into three parts : Arabia Petrsea or the 
peninsula of Sinai; Arabia Deserta or Nedjed, comprising 
the deserts which extend from the Red Sea to the Euphrates ; 
and Arabia Eelix or Yemen. Its religion was a mixture of 
Christianity, introduced by the Abyssinians and Greeks ; of 
Sabeism, taught by the Persians ; of Judaism, which had 
filtered in everywhere in the track of the Jews ; and above 
all of idolatry. The temple of the Kaaba in the holy city 
of Mecca contained 360 idols, the custody of which was in- 
trusted to the illustrious family of the Koreish. There was 
much religious indifference in the presence of so many faiths. 
The masses of population were kept together by the poets, 
who were already develoj^ing the language of Islam in those 
poetical tournaments, wherein the idea of Allah, the Su- 
preme Being, a belief natural to such a country, frequently 
occurs. 

Mohammed was born of Koreish parents in 570. Early 
an orphan and without fortune, he became a camel-driver 
and travelled in Syria where he became intimate with a 
monk of Bostra. His integrity and intelligence won the 
hand of a rich widow named Khadijah. Thenceforth he 
could give himself up to his meditations. At the age of 
forty his ideas were fixed. 

To Khadijah, to his cousin Ali, to his freedman Seid and 



194 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 610-632. 

to his friend Abou-Bekr he disclosed his purpose of restoring 
to the religion of Abraham its primitive purity. He told 
them that he was receiving from God through the Angel 
Gabriel the verses of a book which was to be the book of all 
others, or the Koran. He designated his new religion as 
Islam or entire resignation to the divine will. His hearers 
believed in him and Abou-Bekr won over Othman and the 
fiery Omar to the new faith. The proselytes increased 
daily. Persecuted by the Koreish, he lied to Yatreb (622). 
With the year of the Hegira or Flight the Mussulman era 
begins. 

Yatreb now became Medinat-al-Nabi, the city of the 
Prophet, commonly called Medina. At the battle of Bedr 
300 of his followers defeated 1000 Koreish (624). After- 
wards he was worsted at Mount Ohud, but gained a 
decisive advantage in the War of the Nations or of the 
Trench. Finally he reentered Mecca (630) where he 
destroyed all the idols, saying : " The truth has come. Let 
the falsehood disappear ! " From that moment he was the 
religious leader of Arabia. He wrote threatening letters to 
Chosroes, king of Persia, and to Heraclius, emperor of the 
East, and was on the point of undertaking a holy war against 
them when he died (632). 

The Koran is the collection of all the revelations which 
according to the occasion fell from the mouth of the Prophet, 
and which were collected in a first edition by the orders 
of the Caliph Abou-Bekr, and in a second by those of the 
Caliph Othman. Composed of one hundred and fourteen 
chapters or surates subdivided into verses, it contains both 
the religious and civil law of the Mussulmans. The basis 
of its dogma is fully summed up in these words, " There is 
no God but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God." 
In Allah, the sole and jealous God, the Koran admits no plu- 
rality of persons and it places no inferior divinity beside 
him. It rejects all idea of God made man ; but it teaches 
that God has revealed himself by a series of prophets, 
of whom Mohammed is the last and the most complete. 
Those who preceded him are : Adam, ISToah, Abraham, 
Moses and Christ, with whom God communicated through 
angels, his messengers. Mohammed acknowledged that 
Christ possessed the gift of miracles which he himself had 
not. He preached the immortality of the soul, the resur- 
rection of the body and its participation in the joys or 



A.D. 632-644.] MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 195 

sufferings of a future life. A delightful but sensual para- 
dise was in store for the good, a burning hell for the bad. 
Nevertheless in this paxadise which appealed to the vulgar 
crowd there are also spiritual joys. "The most favored of 
God will be he who shall behold his face evening and morn- 
ing, a felicity which will surpass all the pleasures of the 
senses as the ocean surpasses a drop of dew." 

He elevated the condition of Arab women. " A son," he 
said, " wins paradise at the feet of his mother." Before his 
day the daughters inherited nothing. He assigned to them 
one-half the portion of their brothers. While enforcing the 
authority of the husband, he bade him be a tender protector 
to his wife. Though he tolerated polygamy so as not to 
shock Eastern customs, he allowed a man only four legiti- 
mate wives, and advised that as a praiseworthy act a man 
should confine himself to one. The Koran prescribes severe 
penalties for theft, usury, fraud and false Avitness and 
enjoins alms. It minutely regulates the ritual of worship ; 
the fast of Ramazan ; the observance of the four sacred 
months, an ancient custom which like the truce of God 
suspended hostilities among the faithful ; the great annual 
pilgrimage to Mecca where Mohammed had installed the 
seat of this new religion ; the five daily prayers ; the abso- 
lutions, either with water or sand ; circumcision ; abstinence 
from wine and many other detailed observances. Never- 
theless so far as Christians and Jews were concerned, it is 
sufficient not to ally oneself with thein by blood and one 
must not fight against them unless they give provocation. 
As for other people, it is the duty of every good Mussulmarf 
to attack, pursue and slay them if they do not embrace the 
religion of the Prophet. 

These doctrines, these hopes and these threats were power- 
ful springs of action which launched the Arabs, sword in 
hand, in every direction. 

The Caliphate. The Sunnites and Shiites. Arab Conquests. 
(637-661). — Mohammed did not designate his successor, but 
Abou-Bekr, whom he had charged with pronouncing the for- 
mal prayer in his place, was recognized as caliph or religious, 
civil, and military chief (632). Abou-Bekr in turn desig- 
nated Omar (634) and after Omar, Othman was elected (644), 
who was succeeded by Ali. The latter was the husband of 
Fatima, daughter of the Prophet, and chief of the Fati- 
mite party which gave birth to the great Mussulman sect 



196 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 644-732. 

of the Shiites or Separatists. They regard Ali as having 
been unjustly excluded from the succession after the death 
of Mohammed. The Sunnites, or followers of tradition, rec- 
ognize Abou-Bekr, Omar and Othman as legitimate. After 
Ali the hereditary system begins with the Ommiades (661). 

This period is that of the great conquests. Khaled and 
Amrou by the victories of Aiznadin and the Yermouk wrested 
Syria from Heraclius, emperor of the East, who had just 
returned victorious from expeditions against Persia. In ten 
years' time the conquest of Persia was assured by the vic- 
tories of Kadesiah, Jalula and Nehavend. Yezdegerd, the 
last of the Sassanides, in vain besought succor from the 
emperor of China. In 639 Amrou entered Egypt and made 
himself master of the country after besieging Alexandria 
fourteen months. 

The Ommiades. — The usurpation of Moaviah, chief of the 
Ommiades, who rendered the government a despotism and 
made Damascus his capital, was followed by civil dissensions. 
Blood flowed in streams for thirty years. The almost sus- 
pended movement of conquest began again about 691 under 
Abd-el-Malek. In the east, Transoxiana and Sogdiana were 
conquered and India was threatened. Though in the north 
Constantinople successfully resisted a seven years' siege 
(672-679), the Arab power was established in the west 
along the entire northern coast of Africa. Kairowan was 
founded, Carthage . captured, a revolt of the Moors stifled 
and the Columns of Hercules passed by Tarik who gave 
them his name as the mountain of Tarik or Gibraltar. The 
Spanish Visigothic kingdom, weakened by ecclesiastical in- 
fluence and given up to discord by its elective system of 
monarchy, succumbed at the battle of Xeres (711). Of all 
the peninsula the Christians retained only a corner of land 
in the Asturian mountains where Pelayo took refuge with 
his comrades. Carried on by their ardor the rapid con- 
querors crossed the Pyrenees, occupied Septimania, ravaged 
Aquitaine and were already marching upon Tours when 
Charles Martel arrested them by the victory of Poitiers or 
Tours (732). 

Division of the Caliphate. — Thus the Arabs at a bound 
reached the Pyrenees and the Himalayas. Their faith was 
supreme over two thousand leagues of country. Neverthe- 
less geography, the greatest of forces to support or destroy 
newborn states, condemned their empire to speedy partition 



A.D. 732-1058.] MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 197 

among many masters, because it was too extensive to have 
one centre and contained too many different peoples to pos- 
sess unity. The diverse influences of locality and race soon 
began to manifest themselves and then to enter into conflict. 
The dynasties, representing this or that nationality, which 
geography and history had produced, began to dispute the 
throne with one another and as a natural result the empire 
fell to pieces. 

In 750 the Syrian dynasty of the Ommiades was over- 
thrown by Abul-Abbas, who founded the dynasty of the 
Abbassides, sprung from an uncle of Mohammed. A sin- 
gle Ommiad escaping proscription fled to Spain and there 
erected the Caliphate of the West or of Cordova (755). 
Thus the Abbassides now reigned only over the Caliphate 
of the East or of Bagdad, a new capital built upon the 
Tigris in 762 near the ancient Seleucia. There they fur- 
nished a succession of great men : Almanzor (754), Haroun- 
al-Easchid or the Just (786), Al-Mamoun (813) ; all of them 
patrons of letters, arts and science, which they had borrowed 
from the Greeks. But in those places which had always 
witnessed despotism and where the shade of the great kings 
still seemed to wander, the caliphs soon came to consider 
themselves the image of God on earth. A splendid court 
separated them from their people, immense wealth replaced 
the poverty of Omar and military ardor became extinct in 
the midst of an effeminate life. Then these men, ignorant 
how to fight, bought slaves to make soldiers of them, and the 
slaves became their masters. A guard of Seldjuk Turks was 
introduced into the palace. They filled it with disorder and 
violence and at their pleasure made or unmade sovereigns. 
The Abbassides fell into the condition of the French Sluggard 
Kings. Togrul Beg left to the caliph only an empty reli- 
gious authority (1058) and founded the power of the Seldjuk 
Turks. In the ninth century Africa was detached from the 
Caliphate of Bagdad and divided up among three dynasties : 
the Edrissites at Fez, the Aglabites at Kairowan and the 
Fatimites at Cairo. The latter claimed descent from Fatima, 
the daughter of Mohammed. 

As for the Caliphate of Cordova, like that of Cairo, it 
had its brilliant days. Many Christians being treated 
mildly mingled with the Mussulmans and formed the 
active population of the Mozarabis. The ever-skilful Jews 
were relieved from the rigors of the Visigothic law. Com- 



198 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 755-1031. 

nierce, industry and agriculture flourished and afforded 
the caliplis great riches. Convulsed by the conquests of 
Charlemagne's lieutenants north of the Ebro, the Caliphate 
of Cordova was again shaken by the revolts of the valis, 
or provincial governors, and by the insurrection of the 
bandits, Beni-Hafsoun, which lasted for eighty years. The 
reigns of Abderrahman I (755), Hescham I (787), Al-Hakam 
I and Abderrahman II were very fortunate. That of 
Abderrahman III surpassed all the rest (912-961). The 
successes of this caliph and of Almanzor, the chief minister 
of Hescham II, arrested on the Douro and the Ebro the 
progress of the Christian kingdoms founded in the north. 
But after Almanzor everything fell to pieces. An African 
guard delivered the palace over to a sanguinary anarchy 
which favored the efforts of the valis at independence. In 
1010 Murcia, Badajoz, Grenada, Saragossa, Valentia, Seville, 
Toledo, Carmona, Algesiras, were so many independent 
principalities. In 1031 Hescham, the descendant of the 
Ommiades, was deposed and retired with joy into obscurity. 
Shortly after the very title of caliph disappeared. 

Arabic Civilization. — Such was the fate of the empire of 
the Arabs in the three continents, Asia, Africa and Europe ; 
a sudden and irresistible expansion, then division and a 
rapid general enfeeblement. But they had established 
their religion, their language and the laws of their Koran 
over a great number of peoples, and transmitted to the 
Europe of the Middle Ages industries and sciences of which 
they were, if not the inventors, at least the diffusers. 
While Europe was plunged in thick shades of barbarism, 
Bagdad, Bassorah, Samarcand, Damascus, Cairo, Kairowan, 
Fez, Grenada, Cordova, were so many great intellectual 
centres. 

The Koran had determined the literary Arab language 
and it is preserved to our day just as Mohammed spoke it. 
Time and local influences have caused the vulgar tongue to 
undergo marked transformations. This Arabic, prodig- 
iously rich in words which express the objects and impres- 
sions of the desert, nevertheless adapted itself to all the 
usages of literature and science. From the moribund school 
of Alexandria the Arabs had received Aristotle whom they 
zealously commented. More than once the commentators 
were themselves philosophers worthy of consideration. 
Such were in the East, Avicenna; in the West, Averroes, 



MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 199 

who enjoyed fame in the Middle Ages because he had 
transmitted to the Christians of Europe the knowledge of 
the Stagirite. 

The exact sciences received from Almanzor, the second of 
the Abbassides, a lively impulse, thanks to the learned men 
whom the caliphs attracted from Constantinople. As early 
as the first half of the ninth century two astronomers of 
Bagdad measured in the plain of Sennaar a degree of 
the meridian. Soon afterwards Euclid was expounded, 
Ptolemy's tables corrected, the obliquity of the ecliptic 
more exactly calculated, the precision of the equinoxes and 
the difference between the solar year and the common year 
better determined, new instruments of precision invented 
and at Samarcand an admirable observatory was founded. 
Still it is an error, though common, to attribute to the 
Arabs the invention of algebra and of the so-called Arabic 
figures which Ave use. Probably they only transmitted to 
Europe what they found in the learned school of Alexandria. 
We have from them in the same degree the compass and 
gunpowder. They excelled in medicine where again they 
were the pupils of the ancients, as was Averroes of Galen. 

In architecture also they borrowed much from the Greeks. 
Their horseshoe arch belongs to the Byzantine style. They 
cultivated neither painting nor sculpture, because their 
religion forbade the representation of the human figure, 
but their arabesques are a form of ornamentation peculiar 
to themselves. The magnificent remains of this architect- 
ure can be seen at Cordova, Grenada and Cairo. 

In agriculture and industry we have devised nothing 
superior to their system of irrigation, which the peasants of 
Valencia and Granada still practise. The reputation of the 
sword blades of Toledo, the silk of Grenada, the blue 
and green cloths of Cuenca, the harnesses, saddles and 
leather of Cordova, were celebrated throughout Europe. 
But this civilization like the empire in whose bosom it had 
blossomed disappeared almost as quickly as it was formed. 



200 HISTORY OF THE mBDLE AGES 



THE EMPIRE OF THE PRANKS. EPPORTS TO INTRODUCE 
UNITY IN CHURCH AND STATE 

Difference between the Arab and German Invasions. — The 

Arab invasion began with unity of faith, command and 
direction. It was ruined by scliism, division and weakness. 
The German invasion, made at random and solely for the 
sake of pillage under leaders united by no common idea, at 
lirst gave rise to a number of little kingdoms. It had how- 
ever taken place in countries where the memory of the 
Roman Empire still lingered, and where a new principle of 
unity, that of the Church, had arisen. Thus after wander- 
ing for two centuries in confusion and amid the ruins which 
they had made, nearly all of those adventurers finally 
gathered under the sceptre of one family, that of the Car- 
lovingians, who tried to reconstitute the state and the 
government, while the Pope with his monks and bishops 
organized the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The harmony of 
these two powers caused the brilliancy of Charlemagne's 
reign. Their rivalry brought about the great struggle of the 
Middle Ages, or that between the priesthood and the empire. 
Ecclesiastical Society. — The Roman Empire had perished, 
but so far the barbarians had erected upon its ruins only 
fragile structures. A single institution, the Church, trav- 
ersed the centuries, developing regularly in accordance with 
the spirit of its life, constantly gaining in power and forti- 
fying itself by the unity of its government. This society 
had in the beginning been thoroughly democratic with 
elected leaders. It emerged, mutilated but radiant, from 
the catacombs and the amphitheatres. Constantine bestowed 
upon it the Roman world. In the Councils it determined 
its dogmas and discipline. Thus it found itself possessed 
of a strictly regulated hierarchy, where only the highest 
dignities like the episcopacy and papacy were elective^ 
while the inferior grades were conferred by the bishop. 
If we consider territorial boundaries, the bishop governed 




Copyright, 189S. by T. Y. Crowell & Co. 



A.D. 350-723.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 201 

the diocese which was divided somewhat later into parishes. 
Many dioceses united formed the ecclesiastical province of 
the archbishop or metropolitan, above whom rose the bishops 
of the great capitals Avith the title of patriarchs or primates. 

In this picture we recognize the entire civil organization 
of the empire. Thus the authority, in which the whole mass 
of believers originally shared, was gradually withdrawn from 
the lower classes, handed over to the bishops and ended in 
the West by becoming concentrated at the summit in the 
Pope. This ascent of religious authority, terminated only 
in our day by the proclamation of the dogma of papal infal- 
libility, sums up the entire internal history of the Roman 
Catholic Church. But in the eighth century the sacerdotal 
monarchy had only traversed half the rdUd, toward the end 
of Avhich Boniface VIII was destined to lead it. 

The bishop of Rome possessed great estates in Italy. He 
occupied in the most famous city of the universe that large 
place in the municipal system of government, which at the 
fall of the empire had been conferred upon the bishops. 
Thus the Pope, in addition to his spiritual authority, had 
means of action through the income of the property be- 
stowed upon his Church, and an aruthority which was nat- 
urally increased at the fall of the Western Empire and of 
Theodoric. In temporal affairs he still remained subject to 
the emperor of Constantinople and to his representative in 
Italy, the exarch of Ravenna ; but the yoke was light, thanks 
to distance and to the embarrassment of the exarch whom 
the Lombards threatened and finally expelled. 

Gregory the Great (690-704) did much for the develop- 
ment of the papal power. In the first place he saved Rome 
from an attack by the Lombards. Then he took an energetic 
part in the conversion of heretics and pagans which before 
his time had gone on at random. He brought the Visigoths 
back into the pale of the Catholic Church, won to the faith 
England, Helvetia and Bavaria, multiplied monasteries, 
where dwelt a faithful army under the rule of Saint Bene- 
dict, and drew closer around the bishops the bond of disci- 
pline. His successors continued the work of missions. The 
new churches, daughters of Rome, showed for the mother 
church a respectful attachment. Holland and Friesland 
were evangelized. Saint Boniface, in 723 appointed by the 
Pope bishop of Germany, was about to give to Rome those 
vast provinces. 



202 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 715-741. 

Thus new Rome was again becoming a conqueror and 
dominant. Its chief still remained the subject of the 
emperor but a rupture was inevitable. When Justinian II 
wished to remove Pope Sergius, who rejected the canons of 
the Council in Trullo, the soldiers refused to obey. AVhen 
Leo the Iconoclast ordered the images in Rome to be 
broken, the people drove the imperial prefect from the city 
and the Pope excited the Italians to revolt against the heretic 
prince (726). The Lombards took advantage of this con- 
troversy to seize the exarchy of Ravenna and tried to lay 
hands on Rome. Then it was that Gregory III had recourse 
to the chief of the Austrasian Franks. 

Charles Martel q,nd Pepin the Short (715-768). — After 
the death of Pepin d'Heristal (715), Charles, his natural 
son, took possession of the mayorship with the consent of 
the vassals. He was a valiant man. At the battle of Tours 
(732) he forced the Arab invasion to retreat beyond the 
Pyrenees, and at one blow saved Christianity and G-erman 
supremacy. On the east he defeated the Saxons and 
Bavarians, though leaving much to be done in that direction 
by his successors. In the south he undertook to subjugate 
Aquitaine, still restive Under the authority of the chiefs of 
northern Gaul. His renown equalled his power. In 741 
two nuncios from Gregory III brought him magnificent 
presents, the keys of the tomb of Saint Peter, the titles of 
consul and patrician, and a suppliant letter. The Pope was 
disposing of what did not belong to him; for the pontiff 
offered the conqueror of the Saracens the sovereignty of 
Rome together with the protectorate over the Roman Church. 
In his letter Gregory implored the aid of Charles Martel 
against an energetic and ambitious prince, Luitprand king 
of the Lombards, who wished to unite the whole Italian 
peninsula under his sway. Although Luitprand was a 
Catholic, he was too near Rome. Gregory desired a more 
distant and hence a less exacting protector ; and he granted 
a stranger what he refused to the Italian prince. This policy, 
which has remained that of his successors, was perfectly 
natural, because despite the precept, "Render unto Csesar 
the things which are Caesar's," the Holy See aimed at com- 
plete independence. Yet in such attempts, what evils it 
has drawn down upon Italy without ever gaining a long- 
continued success ! 

Charles had not time to reply to this appeal. He died 



A.D. 741-774.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 203 

in 741, and his sons, Carloman and Pepin, who succeeded 
him as mayors of the palace in Austrasia and Neustria, were 
at first too much occupied along their frontiers to think of 
Italy. But in 747, when Carloman had retired to the convent 
of Monte Cassino, Pepin despoiled his nephews and then 
decided to place upon his own brow the crown, that was 
only a mockery on the head of the Sluggard Kings. He 
consulted Pope Zacharias, and the latter replied that the 
title belonged to him who held the power. Saint Boniface 
revived for his benefit the Hebrew solemnity of consecration 
by Holy Unction (752). The last of the Merovingians was 
shut up in a convent. Two years later Pope Stephen II 
came to France to consecrate for the second time the mayor 
jf Austrasia. Pepin repaid the Pope by giving him Pen- 
tapolis and the exarchate of Kavenna, which he took from 
the Lombards. Thus two important revolutions were effected 
simultaneously. The first was, that among the peoples, who 
had always practised election to the royal power, the Church 
cleverly introduced the contrary doctrine of divine right, of 
which naturally she was the dispenser. The second was, 
that in exchange for this divine legitimacy, which suppressed 
the ancient legitimacy of election, the king prepared by his 
donations the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. Here were 
seen two new principles which dominated society for ten cen- 
turies, and which by a logical connection of things happened 
at the same time. 

The other wars of Pepin the Short were directed against 
the Saxons, whom he vanquished ; against the Saracens, from 
whom he Avrested Septimania, and against the Aquitanians, 
whom he subdued after eight years of rapine and fighting. 

Charlemagne, King^ of the Lombards and Patrician of 
Rome (774). — The second Frank monarchy, founded by 
Pepin the Short, reached its apogee under Charlemagne, who 
completed the work of his two predecessors and presented 
the greatest reign which the history of the German invasion 
records. Wherever his grandfather and father had fought, he 
carried on greater wars. The eastern frontier was threatened 
by the Saxons, Danes, Slavs, Bavarians and Avars. He 
made eighteen expeditions against the Saxons, three against 
the Danes, one against the Bavarians, four against the Slavs 
and four against the Avars. He made seven against the 
Saracens of Spain, five against the Saracens of Italy, five 
against the Lombards and two against the Greeks. If to 



204 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a. d. 768-790. 

these we add those which he directed against several rebel- 
lious peoples already comprised in the Frankish Empire, 
as one against the Thuringians, one against the Aquitanians 
and two against the Bretons, we have a total of hfty-three 
expeditions which Charlemagne conducted for the most part 
in person. 

He had at first shared the inheritance of Pepin with his 
brother Carloman (768). When that prince died three years 
afterward Charlemagne seized Austrasia, to the detriment 
of his nephews who took refuge at the court of Didier, king 
of the Lombards. Thus he remained sole master. While 
winning his first victory over the Saxons, Pope Adrian I 
besought aid against Didier, who had invaded the exarchate. 
Charlemagne crossed the Alps, vanquished the Lombards 
whose king became a monk, threw the sons of Carloman 
into a convent and made a triumphal entry into Kome where 
he confirmed Pepin's donation to the Pope. To the title 
of king of the Franks he added that of king of the Lom- 
bards and of patrician, to which the sovereignty over Kome 
and over all the domains of the Holy See entitled him (774). 

Conquest of Germany (771-804). Spanish Expedition. — 
The war against the Saxons was begun in 771 and lasted 
thirty-three years. This still barbarous people occupied the 
lower course of the Weser and Elbe. Still pagans, they 
adored the idol called Irminsul or Hermann-Saul, conse- 
crated to the vanquisher of Varus. When Saint Libuin 
undertook to convert them, they butchered his companions. 
Charlemagne supported his missionaries, who as spiritual 
conqiierors were prej^aring the way for conquerors of another 
sort. He captured Ehresburg and broke Irminsul to pieces. 
Then appeared Witikind, the Hermann of another age. 
Against this valiant chieftain the most formidable expedi- 
tions long proved of no avail. When his countrymen were 
forced to swear allegiance to the victor at Paderborn (777), 
he fled to the depths of Germany and returned later on to 
rekindle the war. After the great victory of Buckholz, 
Charlemagne transported 10,000 Saxon families to Belgium 
and Helvetia. He deprived the Saxons who remained in 
their own country of their assemblies and their judges, put 
them under Frankish counts and divided their territory 
" among the bishops, abbots and priests, on condition that 
they should preach and baptize there." Many bishoprics 
were established. But Witikind, who had taken refuge 



A.D. 790-812.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 205 

among the Danes, again returned and defeated several 
Frankish generals. The massacre of 4000 Saxon prisoners 
excited a desperate insurrection. It required the two vic- 
tories of Detmold and Osnabriick and a winter passed under 
arms in the snows of Saxony, to triumph over the obstinate 
Witikind, who at last consented to receive baptism. Saxony, 
deluged in blood, was obliged to accept the harsh laws which 
the victor imposed. 

The submission of Bavaria had preceded that of Saxony. 
Its provinces were divided into counties and its last duke 
shut up in a monastery. Behind the Hungarians were the 
Avars, a Hunnic people, who had settled in Ancient Pan- 
nonia, and in an immense camp called the Ring guarded 
the spoils of the world. After fierce conflicts a son of 
Charlemagne succeeded in getting possession of the King 
and imposed tribute on the remnants of this people. 

On the south the Franks were less fortunate. The dis- 
aster of Roncesvaux, the resistance of the Vascons and of 
the Mussulmans of Spain allowed the Franks only outposts 
beyond the Pyrenees in the valley of the Ebro. Not until 
812 could Louis, king of Aquitaine, the oldest son of Char- 
lemagne, quarter his margraves south of the mountains. 

By those wars the whole German race, excepting the 
Anglo-Saxons of Britain and the Northmen of Scandinavia, 
was united into a single group. The foreign and hostile 
peoples which touched its frontiers, the Slavs, Avars and 
Arabs, were driven back or repressed. On the map of the 
world, instead of the confusion of preceding centuries, four 
great states were to be seen between the Indus and the 
Atlantic. These were the German and Greek Empires, and 
the Caliphates of Bagdad and Cordova. 

Limits of the Empire. — The empire of Charlemagne had 
as its boundaries : on the north and west, the ocean from the 
mouth of the Elbe to the Spanish coast along the Bay of 
Biscay ; on the south, the Pyrenees and in Spain a part of 
the Ebro with, in Italy the Garigliano and Pescara, not 
including Gaeta which the Greeks retained, and in Illyricum 
the Cettina or Narenta, without including the cities of Trau, 
Zara and Spalatro ; on the east, the Bosna and the Sava to 
its junction with the Danube, the Theiss, the mountains of 
Bohemia, the Saale, the Elbe and the Eyder. 

Within this vast circle everything was subject. Around 
the Carlovingian empire tributary nations formed a pro- 



206 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 800-812. 

tecting zone. Such were the Navarrese, the Beneventines, 
the North Elbe Saxons and the Wiltzen, all held in check 
by the counts of the frontiers. Brittany and Bohemia had 
been ravaged but not conquered. 

Charlemagne Emperor (800). — Beginning with 800 the 
master of this vast dominion was an emperor. During the 
Christmas festivals of that year, Pope Leo III placed upon 
his head the crown of the Cc^sars. Thus was consummated 
the alliance between the supreme chief of German society 
and the supreme chief of the Church. 

In assuming this title Charlemagne also reassumed all the 
rights of the emperors over Rome and over its bishops. 
Apparently therefore unity, concord and peace were at last 
to be reestablished in the western world. But on the con- 
trary this resuscitation of the empire was to be fatal to all 
who brought it about or who rejoiced at it : to the emperor, 
who will not have the support of a wise administration and 
will consequently be unable to carry this mighty burden ; 
to Italy, who will lose thereby its independence for ten 
centuries. As to the two allies of 800, the Pope and the 
emperor, they will soon be bitter enemies and engage in the 
quarrel of investiture and the wars of the Guelphs and 
Ghibellines. 

Government. — In spite of his Roman title, Charlemagne 
continued the chief of the German race and especially of the 
victorious Austrasian nation, whose language he spoke, whose 
costume he wore and whose country he inhabited. Aix-la- 
Chapelle was his favorite residence. But he showed a wisdom 
which had nothing of the barbarian. Twice every year the 
national assembly met around him. The bishops, the leudes, 
the freemen, the imperial agents, betook themselves there 
from the ends of the empire to inform the sovereign of all 
that took place in their provinces. The nobles met apart 
from the crowd of freemen to discuss and draw up the capit- 
ularies, of which sixty-five still exist comprising 1151 arti- 
cles on every subject of civil and ecclesiastical government. 

Missi dominici, or imperial envoys, traversed four times 
annually the districts submitted to their inspection. They 
went in couples, always a count and a bishop together, so 
as to supplement each other and to provide for all the needs 
of both secular and religious society. On their return they 
were to give the emperor a report of the state of the prov- 
inces. 



A.D. 800-812.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 207 

Justice was rendered by the provincial assemblies, no 
longer by all the freemen but by a certain number of pro- 
vosts. A jury consisted of at least seven persons under the 
presidency of a count and with right of appeal to the missi 
dominici. Beginning with the seventh century there were 
no more public imposts. The monarch received only what 
was due him as a landed proprietor from his numerous 
dependants. His revenues thus included the harvests 
and other income of his domains, the personal and active 
service of the counts and royal beneficiaries, the gratuitous 
gifts of the nobles and the tributes of conquered countries. 
The expenses of the prince and of his agents were defrayed 
by the proprietors over whose estates they passed. More- 
over the proprietors were to maintain the roads and bridges. 
The army furnished its own equipment and lived at its own 
cost without pay. The land, which the soldier had received, 
was his recompense. 

Charlemagne tried to dissipate the darkness which the 
invasions had brought upon the world. All literature had 
taken refuge in the monasteries, especially among those of 
the Benedictines. Their order was founded by Saint Bene- 
dict at the beginning of the sixth century. His rule 
required the copying of ancient manuscripts by the monks. 
To disseminate letters among his people, Charlemagne 
founded schools and compelled his officers to send their 
children to them. In his palace he himself established an 
academy of which he was a member. He commenced a 
Teutonic grammar and composed Latin poems. The prin- 
cipal literary persons of the period are Alcuin, an English 
monk whom he made Abbot of Saint Martin's of Tours, 
and Eginhard, his secretary and perhaps his son-in-law, 
who wrote his life. 

Thus Charlemagne sought to bring order out of chaos 
and light out of darkness by organizing the German and 
Christian society, which he collected around the proud 
throne of the emperors of the West. This effort has caused 
his name to be placed among those before which the world 
bows down. Nevertheless the attempt was futile, because 
all the moral forces of the time and all the instincts and 
interests of the peoples were opposed to its success. Even 
in ancient Gaul, political unity could be preserved only by 
an able and resolute hand. Beyond the Rhine he had built 
the disorderly, fermenting tribes into a living barrier against 



208 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 800-812. 

the Slavs. It was much that modern Germany was to 
succeed old Germania. But the day when he received at 
Rome the crown of the emperors was an evil day for Italy. 
Thenceforth that beautiful land had a foreign and distant 
master, who visited her only with his barbarous and greedy 
hordes. Torrents of blood were shed and piles of ruins 
were heaped up for centuries in the attempt to carry on this 
part of Charlemagne's work. Saddest ruin of all, so long 
irreparable, was that of the people itself and of Italian 
patriotism. 

Charlemagne himself felt that his political edifice could 
not last. The partition of his estates among his sons 
showed that even in his eyes the empire lacked real unity. 
Already the apparition of the Northmen pirates foretold 
the calamities which were to ensue. 



A.D. 812-825.] THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS 209 



VI 

THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS AND THE NORTHMEN 

Weakness of the Carlovingian Empire. Louis the De- 
bonair. — We have seen two immense empires formed in the 
seventh and eighth centuries by the side and at the expense 
of the Eastern Eoman Empire. In the ninth the ancient 
continent changes its aspect. In place of the great blocks 
which formerly covered the face of Europe, Asia and Africa, 
we no longer hnd anything but grains of sand. 

The Gallo-Eomans and the Italians spoke with slight 
differences a similar language, derived from the Latin. 
But the Germans retained their Teutonic idiom. Charle- 
magne left to the Lombards and Saxons their own laws. 
The Salian and Ripuarian Franks, the Alemanni and Bava- 
ians, preserved theirs. Thus these peoples were not fused 
and welded in one. The will of Charlemagne was the only 
bond that held them together. After his death the efforts 
of the tributaries to obtain freedom and the attempt of 
their neighbors, l^orthmen, Slavs, Bretons, to begin again 
their invasions, showed that the whole prestige of the new 
empire depended upon its founder. 

Furthermore the numerous partitions made among the 
sons and grandsons of the Debonair attested not only the 
ambition of those princes but also the tendency of the 
various peoples to separate. The first of these partitions 
took place in 817. It created two inferior kingdoms, Aqui- 
taine and Bavaria, for Pepin and Louis, the second and 
third sons of the emperor. The eldest, Lothaire, was to 
inherit the empire. His brothers without his consent 
could neither make war nor conclude a treaty. Bernard, 
king of Italy, nephew of the emperor, rebelled against 
this partition. Defeated, his eyes were put out and he died 
from the torture. His kingdom was given to Lothaire. 

Louis had married as his second wife the beautiful and 
accomplished Judith, daughter of a Bavarian chief. She 
bore him a son and thenceforth exercised great influence. 



210 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 825-843. 

For this child Louis formed a kingdom composed of Ale- 
mannia, Rhsetia, a part of Burgundy, Provence and Septi- 
mania. His other sons took up arms against their father 
through anger at this partition. They made him prisoner 
and reaffirmed the division of 817. They could not agree 
among themselves and the Debonair was set free. Again 
his sons rebelled, and before a battle the emperor was de- 
serted by his soldiers. He was declared by the bishops to 
have forfeited his crown, was shut up in a monastery at 
Soissons and clad in the garb of a penitent. In the follow- 
ing year he was restored to the throne and made a final 
partition in 839 favorable to his youngest son, Charles the 
Bald. His other sons were again resorting to arms when 
he died (840). 

The Treaty of Verdun (843). — These shameful wars were 
partly due to the feebleness and partiality of the Debonair, 
but also to the unwillingness of his second and third sons 
to recognize the authority of their elder brother, who 
claimed for himself the imperial prerogatives of which the 
people wished to be rid. Lothaire demanded that even in 
the states of his brothers the oath of the freemen should 
be made to him. Pepin was dead, but the former adver- 
saries, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, combined 
to resist this claim. A great battle took place at Fontanet 
near Auxerre. Almost all the peoples of the Carlovingian 
Empire took part in this grand encounter. Lothaire com- 
manded the Italians, Aquitanians and Austrasians; Louis, 
the G-ermans; Charles, the Neustrians and Burgundians. 
In the army of Lothaire 40,000 men are said to have been 
slain. He was defeated but refused to accept this "judg- 
ment of God." To compel his submission the two victors 
formed a closer alliance and confirmed it by an oath, which 
Louis the German swore in the Roman language before the 
soldiers of Charles the Bald, and Charles swore in German 
before those of Louis (842). These two oaths, the "Oath 
of Strasburg," are the two most ancient monuments we 
possess of the French and German languages. 

Lothaire yielded. The treaty of Verdun (843) divided 
the Carlovingian Empire into three parts. Lothaire, with 
the title of e'mperor, secured all Italy as far as the Duchy 
of Beneventum and from the Alps to the North Sea a long 
strip of land separating the states of his brothers. This 
share included the Netherlands, Lorraine, Burgundy, Swit- 



A.D. 843-870.] THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS 211 

zerland, Dauphine and Provence. All which, lay to the 
west of this track, called Lotharingia, fell to Charles the 
Bald. All which lay to the east, to Louis the German. 
This partition differed greatly from any made by the Me- 
rovingians. We see in it the first demarcations of the 
modern nations of France and Germany. The part of 
Lothaire alone was ephemeral. The other two were des- 
tined to aggrandize themselves from its fragments. 

Charles the Bald (840-877). — He did not really reign 
over the whole of Gaul. The Bretons kept their indepen- 
dence and Aquitaine for a long time would not submit. 

When Lothaire died his estates were divided among his 
three sons. Louis II had Italy, with the title of emperor ; 
Charles, the country between the Alps and the Rhone 
under the name of Provence ; Lothaire II, the country 
between the Meuse and the Rhine called Lotharingia. All 
three died without issue. Louis the German survived 
them only a few years. Charles the Bald endeavored to 
place all their crowns upon his head, but was unable to 
defend his cities against the Northmen and his authority 
against the nobles. 

Progress of Feudalism. — The possessors of fiefs, or lands 
ceded for a time, and of crown offices, claimed that their 
fiefs and offices were hereditary. This assumption was 
always opposed by Charlemagne, but tolerated and even 
approved by Charles. He also allowed possessors of allo- 
dial lands to seek the protection of the holders of great 
fiefs. At the same time the immunities, or exemptions 
from payments and from the king's jurisdiction, were 
multiplied. Thus the royal authority was recognized by 
neither the powerful nor the weak. 

The Northmen took advantage of these disorders. They 
landed along the coasts, ascended the rivers and sacked the 
cities. In 845 they pillaged the Abbey of Saint Germain 
des Pres at the very gates of Paris. Yearly they became 
more rapacious. Charles the Bald paid them money to go 
away, thereby insuring their speedy return. Only Robert 
the Strong, who as duke of France held the country be- 
tween the Seine and the Loire, offered energetic resistance. 
This Robert, ancestor of the Capetian dynasty, many times 
defeated the invaders and died fighting these pirates. 

Deposition of Charles the Fat. Seven Kingdoms. — Louis 
II the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald, and his sons. 



212 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 870-987. 

Louis III and Carloman, had miserable reigns. They died 
childless and the crown was offered to Charles the Fat, the 
son of Louis the German. He had united Germany and 
bore the title of emperor. The empire of Charlemagne 
was thus reconstituted for a brief time. But it was only 
the shadow of a great past. Emperor though he was, 
Charles could not repulse the Northmen who besieged 
Paris. The city Avas saved by Eudes, a reputed son of 
Robert the Strong. 

Disgusted at the cowardice of the king, the Germans 
deposed him at the diet of Tribur (887). Seven king- 
doms were formed from the fragments of the empire : 
Italy, Germany, Lorraine, France, Navarre and two Burgun- 
dies. Besides, Brittany and Aquitaine were independent 
in fact if not in law. The imperial crown remained in 
Italy, where petty sovereigns wrangled over it among them- 
selves. 

Eudes and the last Carlovingians (887-987). — Despite 
the opposition of the nobles, the brave Count Eudes occu- 
pied the throne. His premature death in 898 caused the 
accession of Charles III the Simple, a posthumous son of 
Louis the Stammerer. 

Under this prince the incursions of the Northmen ceased, 
because, after having seized booty so long, they now seized 
the country itself. The treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte ceded 
to Eollo, their terrible chief, the country between the An- 
delle and the ocean with the hand of the king's daughter 
and the title of duke. In return he paid homage and be- 
came a Christian (911). Neustria, henceforth called Bur- 
gundy, became prosperous under the rule of this active 
prince. Charles, whose surname indicates his feebleness, 
was deposed in 922 and died in captivity in the tower of 
Peronne. The nobles elected in his stead Robert, Duke of 
France, and afterwards his son-in-laAV Raoul, Duke of Bur- 
gundy. In 935 another Carlovingian king appeared in 
Louis IV d'Outremer, son of Charles the Simple, whom 
Hugh the Great, Duke of France, twice seated on the 
throne and twice overthrew. His son, Lothaire, succeeded 
him (954), but was reduced to the possession of the single 
city of Laon. On his deathbed he entreated Hugh Capet, 
Duke of France, to protect his son Louis V. The latter 
reigned only one year. Hugh Capet was proclaimed king 
in an assembly of the principal bishops and nobles of north- 



A.D. 987.] THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS 213 

ern France. Two important factors of this enthronement 
must be noted. They are, that the Capetians had the 
Church for an ally from the very beginning, and that the 
crown, now united to a great fief, could thenceforth defend 
itself unaided. 



214 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a. d. 800-850. 



VII 

THE THIRD INVASION 

The Wew Invasion. — The invasion which assailed the 
second Western Empire four centuries after the Germans 
had destroyed the first or Western Koman Empire, was a 
powerful cause in the dissolution of the Carlovingian mon- 
archy. The movement of attack proceeded from three 
points, from the north, south and east, and was so pro- 
longed toward the west as to envelop the whole empire. 
The Northmen were the first to appear. 

The Northmen in France. — The Franks, after attaining 
the western limits of Gaul, had voltefaced and swept back 
from west to east the floods of men who had poured upon 
the Roman provinces. Then they undertook to subjugate 
Thuringia, Bavaria and Saxony. Their foes retreated tow- 
ard the north to the Cimbrian and Scandinavian penin- 
sulas, where dwelt populations of their own blood. The 
Northmen, restrained by the military organization which 
Charlemagne had given his eastern frontier, and by the 
Slavs who occupied the country of the Oder, found every- 
thing before them shut up except the sea. So they launched 
upon the water, ''the path of the Swans." Familiar with 
its tempests, the vikings or children of the fiords were 
daunted by no peril. " The hurricane bears us on," they 
said, " wherever we wish to go." At first coasting along 
the shores for pillage and slaughter, they gradually estab- 
lished themselves at favorable points and thence roamed all 
over the country. 

In this way they took possession of the Walcheren 
Islands at the mouth of the Scheldt, and of other places 
at the mouths of the Ehine, Seine and Loire. In 840 they 
burned Rouen. Three years later they pillaged Nantes, 
Saintes and Bordeaux. Repeatedly they ravaged the out- 
skirts of Paris, sacked Tours, Orleans and Toulouse, and 
reached the Mediterranean. A royal edict ordered the 
counts and vassals to repair the castles and build new ones. 



A.D. SoO-lOGG.] THE THIRD INVASION 215 

Soon the country was well fortified. The invaders, checked 
at every step, b(\2:an to wish to settle in some safe and fer- 
tile spot. In 911 Xeustria was assigned them. Their dev- 
astations, continued almost a century, had prepared the 
way for feudalism. 

The Northmen Danes in England. — The Northmen had 
robbed France and the Netherlands of both security and 
property. From England they took her independence be- 
sides. In 827 the Saxon Heptarchy formed but one mon- 
archy under Egbert the Great. He repulsed the first Danes 
who landed upon his shores. After his death they occupied 
Northumberland, East Anglia and Mercia. Alfred the 
Great (871) arrested their progress and gave his kingdom 
an organization, the main features of which have been pre- 
served. These are : division of the country into counties ; 
dispensation of justice by twelve freeholders as a jury ; 
decision of general affairs by the wittenagemot or assembly 
of the wise, aided by a half-elective, half-hereditary mon- 
archy. Athelstane, one of his successors, vanquished the 
Danes '^ on the day of the great fight " and drove them from 
England. But they soon reappeared led by Olaf, king of 
Norway, and Swein or Sueno, king of Denmark, who 
carried off enormous booty. Gold not proving an effectual 
means of getting rid of them, Ethelred devised a vast plot. 
All the Danes who were settled in Eu gland were massacred 
on Saint Brice's day in 1002. Swein avenged his country- 
men by expelling Ethelred and assuming the title of king 
of England in 1013. Edmund II Ironsides fought heroi- 
cally but in vain against Canute, wdio succeeded Swein, and 
the whole country recognized the Danish sway. Canute 
was at first cruel, but grew milder. By wedding Emma, the 
widow of Ethelred, he paved the way for the union of the 
victors and the vanquished. He made wise laAvs or enforced 
those of Alfred the Great and prevented the Danes from 
oppressing the Saxons. To Scandinavia he sent Saxon 
missionaries Avho hastened the fall of expiring paganism. 
In 1027 he made a pilgrimage to Eome, where in behalf 
of all England he assumed the obligation of paying each 
year one penny per hearth to the Pope. This contribution 
was called Peter's Pence. 

Thus in France the Northmen took only a province. In 
England they seized a kingdom. On both sides of the 
Channel these robbers showed the same aptitude for civili- 



216 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-950. 

zation, and the fierce lieathen became excellent Christians. 
Rollo in Normandy was a stern judicial officer and Canute 
deserved the name of the Great. 

The Northmen in the Polar Regions and in Eussia. — The 
larger number of these hardy adventurers descended toward 
the south where they found wine and gold. Others worked 
their way through the Baltic to the very end of the Gulf of 
Finland, or climbed above the North Cape, for the joy of 
seeing the unknown and doing the impossible. In 861 they 
made their appearance in the Faroe Islands ; in 870 in Ice- 
land, and a century later in Greenland whence they reached 
Labrador and Vinland, the country of the Vine. Thus they 
were in America four or five centuries before Columbus ! 
Their exiles, the Varangians, penetrated at the same time 
by way of the Baltic to the centre of the Slavs, and sold 
their services to the powerful city of Novgorod, which their 
leader, Rurik, subjugated (862). He assumed the title of 
grand prince, and began the state which has become the 
Russian Empire. 

As the Arabs, when they emerged eastward and westward 
from their parched peninsula, had spread from India to 
Spain Avithout quitting their native southern regions, so the 
Northmen, starting from their sterile peninsulas, reached 
America and the Volga and still remained in northern 
latitudes. The former had in certain respects an original 
civilization. The latter, mastered by Christianity, were in 
no way different from the rest of the Christian nations. 

The Saracens and the Hungarians. — The Saracens were 
the Arabs of Africa who, leaving their brethren to conquer 
provinces, took the sea for their domain and ravaged all 
the shores of the western Mediterranean. Tunis, or the 
ancient province of Carthage, was their point of departure. 
As early as 831 they subdued Sicily and passed over to the 
Great Land, as they called Italy. They seized Brindisi, 
Bari and Tarentum, repeatedly laid waste southern Italy 
and even ravaged the outskirts of Rome. Malta, Sardinia, 
Corsica and the Balearic Isles belonged to them. They 
settled permanently in Provence at Fraxinet, which they 
retained until toward the close of the tenth century. They 
had posts in the defiles of the Alps to exact toll from com- 
merce and pilgrimage. Thence their raids extended into the 
valleys of the Rhone and Po. This piracy was more terrible 
and more audacious than that organized in the sixteenth can- 



A.D. 950-1000.] THE THIRD INVASION 217 

tury by Khaireddin Barbarossa, which France suppressed 
only in 1830. 

In the valley of the Danube, through which came the 
Hungarians, the invasion had not ceased since the time of 
Attila. There the human streams had pressed upon each 
other like successive waves of the sea, driven on by the 
tempest. After the Huns came the Slavs who still remain 
there; then the Bulgarians, the Avars whom Charlemagne 
exterminated, the Khazars, the Petchenegs who have dis- 
appeared, and lastly a mixture of Hunnic and Ugrian tribes, 
which the Latins and the Greeks called Hungarii or Hunga- 
rians and who gave themselves the name of Magyars. Sum- 
moned by Arnulf, king of Germania, against the Slavs of 
Moravia, they quickly subjected the plains of the Theiss 
and of Dannonia. In 899 they ravaged Carinthia and 
Friuli. The following year they launched their bold horse- 
men on both sides of the Alps into the basin of the Po, the 
upper valley of the Danube, and even to the other side of 
the E-hine. Alsace, Lorraine and Burgundy were devas- 
tated. The hordes of the third invasion, the Northmen, 
Saracens and Hungarians, seemed to have ap^jointed a 
meeting-ground in the heart of France and they left there 
an awful memory. Germany at last made mighty efforts to 
rid herself of these invaders. Henry the Fowler defeated 
them on the field of Merseburg (934), and his son Otto I 
slew, it is said, 100,000 at the battle of Augsburg (955). 
This disaster hurled them back into the country which 
they still inhabit. , 

The ruinous expeditions of the Magyars had the same 
result as those of the Northmen. In Italy the cities sur- 
rounded themselves with walls for the purpose of defence, 
just as the country districts of France bristled with castles, 
and the Italians reorganized their military forces, which 
enabled them to regain their municipal independence. 
Austria was in the beginning a margrave's fief, formed for 
military jourposes against the Hungarians. The margravate 
of Brandenburg, in which Prussia originated, played the 
same part against the Slavs. These two immense territorial 
fortresses at last arrested the Eastern hordes in that west- 
ward march which had begun in the early periods of history. 
The Mongols in the thirteenth century and the Ottoman 
Turks in the fifteenth, still obeying this primitive impulse, 
will make mere temporary inroads upon the Slavic world 



218 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1000. 

and will be forced to halt at the frontiers of the Teutonic 
race. No more new peoples are to be received into the 
countries which formed the Western Eoman Empire. 

The invasion of the ninth century had as a consequence 
the foundation of new governing forces in Eussia, Pannonia, 
Normandy and England. All these countries were situated 
on the outer verge of the ancient world. Within that 
ancient world its attacks had disturbed the states founded 
by the Germans, produced confusion and hastened the 
progress of feudal anarchy. 



.D. 850-1100.] FEUDALISM 219 



VIII 

FEUDALISM 

Feudalism, or the Heredity of Offices and Fiefs. —We have 

just seen how the empire was divided into kingdoms. The 
kingdoms are about to dissolve into seigniories. The great 
political masses are crumbling into dust. 

The officers of the king, of whatever rank, under the last 
Carlovingians asserted the heredity of their offices or pub- 
lic duties as well as of their fiefs or land-grants. Hence 
was formed a hierarchy of possessors, peculiar in this 
respect that every parcel of land was a fief of some lord 
above the tenant and that every lord was a vassal recogniz- 
ing some suzerain. Naturally in this hierachy the pos- 
sessors or proprietors were unequal. Moreover, various 
concessions or exemptions had given these landed pro- 
prietors control of the public taxes and administration of 
the royal justice. Hence the king no longer was master 
of either lands or money or judicial rights. This system 
was called feudalism. It was first recognized by the edict 
of Kierry-sur-Oise (877), whereby Charles the Bald recog- 
nized the right of a son to inherit the fief or the office of his 
father. 

One man became the vassal of another by the ceremony 
of homage and faith. That is to say, he declared himself 
the man of the new lord to whom he swore fidelity. The 
lord granted him the fief by investiture, often accompanied 
by some symbolic rite such as gift of a sod, a stone, or staff. 
Without mentioning the moral obligations of the vassal to 
defend and respect his 1-ord, insure him deference from 
others and aid him by good counsel, he was bound by cer- 
tain material obligations. These were: (1) Military ser- 
vice, a fundamental principle of this society which was 
unacquainted with permanent salaried armies. The number 
of men to be furnished on requisition of the lord and the 
length of service varied according to the fief, here sixty 
days, there forty, elsewhere twenty. (2) Obligation to 



220 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 850-1100. 

serve the suzerain in his court of justice and attend his 
sessions. (3) The aids or assistance, in some forms legal 
and obligatory, in others benevolent or voluntary. The 
legal assistance was due, when the lord was a prisoner and 
a ransom must be provided, when knighthood was conferred 
upon his eldest son, and when he gave his eldest daughter 
in marriage. Such assistance took the place of public taxes. 
Certain other services were required. These duties once 
rendered, the vassal became almost the master of his fief. 
He could enfeoff or let the whole or a part of it to vassals 
of inferior rank. 

The suzerain also had his obligations. He could not 
arbitrarily and without sufficient cause deprive a vassal of 
his fief. He was bound to defend him if attacked and to 
treat him justly. Judgment by one's peers was the princi- 
ple of feudal justice. The vassals of the same suzerain 
were equal among themselves. If the lord refused justice 
to his vassal, the latter could appeal to the superior suze- 
rain. He even exercised at need the right of private war, 
a right of which the lords were very tenacious and which 
rendered feudalism a violent system, opposed to all pacific 
development of human society and injurious to commerce, 
agriculture and industry. This same principle caused the 
admission into legal procedure of the judicial combat in 
closed lists. The Truce of God, which forbade private 
wars between Wednesday evening and Monday morning, 
was an effort on the part of the Church to moderate the 
violence which it could not entirely prevent. 

Jurisdiction did not appertain to all lords in the same 
measure. In France three degrees were recognized, high, 
low aiid intermediate. The first alone conferred the right 
of life and death. In general the largest fiefs possessed 
the most extensive jurisdiction. Among seigniorial rights 
we must note that of coining money, exercised at the advent 
of Hugh Capet by not less than 150 lords. Moreover, 
within the limits of his own fief each made the law. The 
capitularies of Charles the Bald are the last manifestations 
of public legislative power. Thenceforward to the time 
of Philip Augustus general laws no longer existed in 
France, being superseded by local customs. The clergy 
itself entered this system. The bishop, formerly the 
"defender of the city," often became its count and hence 
the suzerain of all the lords of his diocese. Moreover the 



A.D. 850-1100.] FEUDALISM 221 

bishop or abbot, througli donations made to his church or 
convent, received great possessions which he enfeoffed. 
This ecclesiastical feudalism became so powerful that in 
France and England it held more than one-fifth, and in 
Germany nearly one-third of all the land. 

Below the warlike society of the lords was the toiling 
society of the villeins and serfs. The freemen had disap- 
peared. The villeins, or free tenants, and the serfs culti- 
vated the land for the lord under the shadow of the feudal 
keep around which they clustered, and which sometimes de- 
fended but more often oppressed them. The villein had 
only to pay his fixed rents like a farmer and to perform 
the least onerous forced labor. He could not be detached 
from the land which had been assigned him to cultivate, 
but he had the right to hold it as his own. As for the serfs, 
"The sire," says Pierre de Fontaine, "can take all that 
they have, can hold their bodies in prison whenever he 
pleases, and is forced to answer therefor only to God alone." 
In spite of this the condition of the serf was better than 
that of the slave in antiquity. He was regarded as a man. 
He had a family. The Church, which declared him a son 
of Adam, made him, before God at least, the equal of the 
proudest lords. 

To sum up : the abandonment of everj^ right to the lord, 
— such is the principle of feudal society. As royalty no 
longer fulfilled the office for which it was founded, protec- 
tion could no longer be expected from either the law or 
the nominal head of the state, and was now demanded 
from the bisho]3s, the barons and powerful persons. It 
was the sword which afforded this protection. Hence arose 
those interminable wars which broke out everywhere in 
feudal Europe, and which through their inevitable results 
of murder and pillage were the scourge of the period. 

Nevertheless many persons admire those days which 
pressed so heavily upon the poor. They admit that com- 
merce and industry had fallen very low, that social life 
seemed to have returned to elementary conditions, that 
there was much outrage and little security, that, despite the 
exhortations of the Church, in this miserable intellectual 
state passions were more brutal than in our age and vices 
as numerous. But, they say, the serf of the soil was 
happier than the serf of modern industry ; competition did 
not rob him of his meagre pittance 5 setting aside the 



222 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-1100. 

chances of private war and brigandage, he was more 
assured of the morrow than are our laborers ; his needs 
were limited, like his desires ; he lived and died under the 
shadow of his bell-tower, full of faith and resignation. 
All this is true. Yet nature has not made man a plant 
to vegetate in the forest or an animal to be led by his appe- 
tites. 

On many points the Middle Ages Avere inferior to antiq- 
uity. As to a few they were in advance. They made many 
men miserable, but they provided many asylums in the 
monasteries. Under the beneficent influence of Christian- 
ity the family was reconstituted. Through the necessity of 
depending upon one's self the soul gained vigor. Those 
lovers of battle recovered the sentiments of courage and 
honor which the Eomans of the decline no longer knew. 
Though the state was badly organized, there existed for 
the vassal strong legal maxims, which through a thousand 
violations liave come down to us : no tax can be exacted 
without the consent of the taxpayers ; no law is valid unless 
accepted by those who have to obey it ; no sentence is legit- 
imate unless rendered by the peers of the accused. Lastly, 
in the midst of this society which recognized no claims but 
those of blood, the Church by the system of election as- 
serted those of intelligence. Furthermore, by its God-man 
upon the cross and its doctrine of human equality, it was 
to the great inequalities of earth a constant intimation of 
what shall be carried into effect when the principle of reli- 
gious law passes into civil law. 

Great French, German and Italian Fiefs. — The feudal 
organization, which was complete only at the end of the 
eleventh century, reigned in all the provinces of the Car- 
lovingian empire. Yet the great names of France, Germany 
and Italy survived, and great titles were borne by the so- 
called kings of those countries. Yet these were show kings, 
not real kings. They were mere symbols of the territorial 
unity which had vanished, and not genuine, active, powerful 
heads of nations. The Italian royalty disappeared early. • 
The royalty of France fell very low. The crown of Ger- 
many, however, shed a brilliant light for two centuries after 
Otto I had restored the empire of Charlemagne. Yet the 
copy shrank in proportion as tlie model became more remote. 
Charlemagne reigned over fewer peoples than Constantine 
and Theodosius. The Ottos, the Henrys, the Fredericks, 



A.D. .snO-llOO.] FEUDALISM 223 

reigned over less territory than Charlemagne and their 
authority was less unquestioned. 

The king of France possessed the duchy of France, which 
had become a royal domain. Enclosing this territory on every 
side between the Loire, the ocean, the Scheldt, the upper Meuse 
and the Saone stretched vast principalities, whose princes 
rivalled him in wealth and power. These were the counties of 
Flanders, Anjou and Champagne, and the duchies of Nor- 
mandy and Burgundy. Between the Loire and the Pyrenees 
lay the ancient kingdom of Aquitaine, divided into the four 
dominant hefs of the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony 
and the counties of Toulouse and Barcelona. These great 
feudatories, immediate vassals of the crown, were called 
peers of the king. To these lay peers, six ecclesiastical 
peers were added : the archbishop-duke of Reims, the bishop- 
dukes of Laon and Langres, and the three bishop-counts 
of Beauvais, Chalons and Noyon. Among the secondary 
fiefs were reckoned not less than 100 counties and a still 
greater number of fiefs of inferior order. The kingdom 
of Aries included the three valleys of the Saone, Rhone and 
Aar. 

The nominal boundaries of the kingdom of Germany 
were : on the west, the Meuse and Scheldt ; on the north- 
west, the North Sea; on the north, the Eyder, the Baltic 
and the little kingdom of Slavonia ; on the east, the Oder 
and the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary ; on the south, 
the Alps. It comprised nine main territorial divisions : the 
vast duchy of Saxony, Thuringia, Bohemia, Moravia, the 
duchies of Bavaria and Carinthia, Alemannia or Suabia, 
Franconia and lastly Friesland on the shores of the North 
Sea. 

The kingdom of Italy comprehended Lombardy, or the 
basin of the Po, with its great republics of Milan, Pavia, 
Venice and Genoa; the duchy or marquisate of Tuscany, 
the States of the Church ; also the four Norman states, the 
principalities of Capua .and Aversa and of Tarentum, the 
duchy of Pouille and Calabria, and the grand county of 
Sicily. 

In Christian Spain we find in the centre the kingdom of 
Castile and Leon ; in the west, the county of Portugal, 
dependent upon the crown of Castile ; on the north and 
northeast, the kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon. In Great 
Britain are the kingdoms of England and Scotland and the 



224 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 850-1100. 

principality of Wales. . Between the North Sea and the 
Baltic are the three Scandinavian states of Sweden, Nor- 
way and Denmark. Among the Slavs are the kingdoms of 
Slavonia on the Baltic, of Poland on the Vistula, the grand 
duchy of Russia with its multitude of divisions, and the 
duchy of Lithuania. In the year 1000 Pope Sylvester II 
sent a royal crown to Saint Stephen who had just con- 
verted the Hungarians. Soon Christian Europe is to rush 
in the direction of the Eastern Empire, from which the Arabs 
have stripped Africa and Egypt and on whose provinces of 
Syria and Asia Minor the Turks are encamped. 

Civilization from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. — The 
revival of letters under Charlemagne did not survive him. 
Hincmar, the great bishop of Eeims, the monk Gottschalk, 
advocate of predestination, and his adversary, Joannes 
Scotus Erigena, still agitated burning questions. After 
them silence and thick darkness covered the tenth century. 
The physical like the moral wretchedness was extreme. So 
miserable was the world that mankind believed it would 
end in the year 1000. The future seeming so brief, build- 
ings were no longer erected, and those existing were allowed 
to fall in ruin. After that fatal year was past, men began 
again to hope and live. Human activity awoke. Numerous 
churches were constructed. Sylvester II cast abroad in 
Europe the first intimation of the Crusade which was about 
to set the world in motion. 

A literary movement awoke more powerful than that 
under Charlemagne. The vulgar tongues were already 
assuming their place at the side of the learned and universal 
ecclesiastical- Latin. The latter was still employed in the 
convents, which rapidly multiplied. It continued as the 
medium of theology and of the grave discussions which 
began to resound. Lanfranc, abbot of Bee and afterwards 
archbishop of Canterbury, and his successor. Saint Anselm 
who composed the famous treatise of the Moyiologium, 
imparted fresh animation to the movement of ideas. The 
eleventh century had not closed when the fierce battle com- 
menced between the realists and the nominalists in which 
Abelard took such brilliant part. 

The vulgar tongues were as numerous as the newly 
formed nations. Teutonic idioms prevailed in Germany, the 
Scandinavian states and England. In Italy arose Italian, 
destined to attain perfection before the others. In France 



A.D. 850-1100.] FEUDALISM 225 

was fashioned the Romance, already distinguished as the 
northern Eomance or Walloon or language of oil, and the 
southern Romance or Provencal or language of oc, which 
was also spoken in the valley of the Ebro. 

The first literary use of the Romance was made by the 
poets of the time, the trouveres in the north, the troubadours 
in the south, and the jongleurs. The trouvere and troubadour 
invented and composed the poem which the jongleur recited. 
Sometimes the same person was both composer and reciter. 
They roamed from castle to castle, relieving by their songs 
the ennui of the manor. The trouveres generally composed 
chansons de gestes, epics of twenty, thirty or fifty thousand 
verses. They treated the subjects in cycles according to the 
period represented. First was the Carlovingian cycle with 
Charlemagne and his twelve peers as the heroes and the 
Chanson de Roland as its masterpiece. Then came the 
Amorican cycle with King Arthur, the champion of Breton 
independence, and the exploits of the knights of the Round 
Table. The principal poet of this theme is Robert Wace, 
with his Roman de Brut. To the third cycle belong all 
those ancient subjects which now take their place in popular 
poetry like a distant and confused prophecy of the Re- 
naissance. These heroic lays are the poetry of feudalism 
and also of the chivalry which followed it. 

The lords delighted in gathering their vassals around 
them. To some they confided services of honor as constable, 
marshal, seneschal, or chamberlain. The vassal brought his 
sons to the court of his suzerain, where as pages and es- 
quires they were trained for knighthood. Into that exalted 
rank they were initiated by a ceremony, partly religious and 
partly military. The fast for twenty-four hours, the vigil, 
the bath, the accolade, the assumption of sword and spurs, 
were among its rites. To pray, to flee from sin, to defend 
the Church, the widow, the orphan, to protect the people, 
to make war honorably, to do battle for one's lady, to love 
one's lord, to pay heed to the wise, — such w^ere the duties of 
the knight. The tournament was his diversion. 

This new and original society not only produced scholasti- 
cism, the vulgar tongues, feudalism and chivalry, but also 
made innovations in art. To the Roman architecture, indif- 
ferently called Byzantine or Lombard and distinguished by 
a rounded arch supported on columns, succeeded a pointed 
architecture, wrongly termed gothic. The pointed arch, an 



226 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-1100. 

elementary and easier style than the rounded arch, belongs 
to all times and countries, but it was monopolized in the 
twelfth century and became the essential element in that 
new architecture which has imparted to mediaeval cathe- 
drals their imposing grandeur. 



A. D. 887-1000.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 227 



IX 

THE GERMAN EMPIRE. STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE 
PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE 

Germany from 887 to 1056. — While France was calling 
to the throne her native lords, Eudes and Hugh Capet, 
Germany, on the deposition of Charles the Fat (887), elected 
Arniilf, the bastard son of Carloman and a descendant of 
Charlemagne. As heir of the Carlovingian claims this 
prince received the homage of the kings of France, Trans- 
Jurane Burgundy, Aries and Italy. Finally he caused him- 
self to be crowned king of Italy and emperor. Thereby he 
only gained an additional title. He repulsed several bands 
of Northmen and set against the Moravians the Hungarians, 
who were beginning to make as devastating raids through 
Europe as those of the northern pirates. With his son, 
Louis the Child, the German Carlovingian branch became 
extinct. Hence Germany began to choose sovereigns from 
different families, and election took root among German 
political customs at the very time when French royalty was 
becoming hereditary like the possession of a fief. There- 
fore the two royalties had a different experience in store. 
Conrad I was elected in 911. Under him began that con- 
flict, which filled all the German Middle Ages, between the 
great feudatories and the Franconian emperor. He wished 
to weaken Saxony, the rival of Franconia, and to deprive it 
of Thuringia. Vanquished at Ehresburg by Duke Henry, 
he gained an advantage over the Duke of Lorraine whom 
he despoiled of Alsace, and over the governors of Suabia 
whom he beheaded. 

After him the crown passed to the house of Saxony, where 
it remained for more than 100 years. Conrad on his death- 
bed had designated for his successor his former conqueror 
as the man most capable of defending Germany against the 
Hungarians. So Duke Henry was elected. 

He brought order out of disorder and gave Germany 
definite boundaries. He forced every man above sixteen to 



228 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 934-1050. 

bear arms and founded fortresses on the frontiers. The great 
victory won by him near Merseburg (934) announced that the 
depredations of the Hungarians were near their end. His 
son, Otto I the Great, inflicted on them a decisive defeat at 
Augsburg (955), which compelled them to remain quiet in 
the country they still inhabit. The dukes of Franconia and 
Bavaria had rebelled and were supported by the French 
king, Louis IV. Otto defeated the rebels and penetrated 
France as far as Paris. 

The restoration of the empire is the most important 
achievement of his reign. The last titular emperor, Be- 
ranger, had been assassinated. Otto wedded his queen, 
was proclaimed king of Italy at Milan and crowned em- 
peror at Rome (962). He undertook to maintain the dona- 
tions made the Holy See by Charlemagne, the Romans 
promising not to elect a Pope except in the presence of the 
emperor's envoys. By a single blow he thus restored the 
empire to the benefit of the kings of Germany, and founded 
a German domination over Italy. The southern part of the 
Italian peninsula remained in the possession of the Greeks. 
To obtain this territory without combat he secured the hand 
of the Princess Theophania for his son Otto. His succes- 
sors. Otto II, Otto III and Henry II, were unable to retain 
the predominance which he had exercised. Under Otto III 
the tribune Crescentius tried to overturn the papal authority 
and restore the Roman republic. Under Henry II Italy 
gave to herself for a moment a national king. 

In 1024 the imperial crown departed from the house of 
Saxony and entered that of Franconia. Conrad II compelled 
the king of Poland to recognize him as his suzerain, made 
prisoner the king of Bohemia and reunited to the empire 
the two Burgundies. The convention which he signed with 
the aged king of Aries is invoked by German writers to-day, 
as a claim on behalf of the present German Empire to the 
two valleys of the Saone and Rhone. In Italy Conrad 
ruined the Italian system of feudalism by his edict of 1037, 
which declared that all fiefs depended directly from the 
prince. His son, Henry III (1039), was the one emperor 
whose authority was best assured in Germany and Italy. 
He forced the king of Bohemia to pay tribute, restored to 
Alba, Royale, the banished king of Hungary, and received 
his homage. In Italy he dominated even the papacy. 

The Monk Hildebrand. — A monk, the counsellor of many 



A.D. 1050-1073.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 229 

Popes before he himself succeeded to the Holy See, pro- 
posed to deliver the papacy and Italy from German control. 
In 1059 Hildebrand caused a decree to be issued by Nicho- 
las II, Avhich announced that the election of the Popes 
should be made by the cardinal priests and cardinal 
bishops of the Roman territory ; that the other clergy and 
the Roman people should then give their assent ; that the 
emperor should retain the right of confirmation ; and lastly, 
that in election a member of the Roman clergy should be 
preferred. Another decree forbade any ecclesiastic to re- 
ceive the investiture of an ecclesiastical benefice from a 
layman. These decrees freed the Pope from dependence 
upon the emperor and placed all the temporal power of the 
Church in the hand of the pontiff thus emancipated. 

Greg^ory VII and Henry IV (1073-1085). — In 1073 Hilde- 
brand was elected Pope under the name of Gregory VII. The 
Pope was about to complete the work of the monk. His plans 
enlarged with his opportunity. Charlemagne and Otto the 
Great had rendered the Pope subordinate to themselves, 
and had placed the church within the state as the Greeks 
and Romans had done. But royalty, the central power, 
was declining throughout Europe because of the invading pro- 
gress of the feudal system or the increasing local powers of 
the dukes, counts and barons. The clergy, on the other 
hand, had beheld popular faith and confidence in the Church 
increase in that same century. Its leader decided that the 
moment had come for restoring to those charged with the 
salvation of the soul the influence necessary for imparting 
the best direction to civil society, and for repressing moral 
disorders, violations of justice and all the causes of perdition. 
In a priest, such an ambition was great and legitimate. 
But had this attempt succeeded, the state in consequence 
would have been placed within the church. A sacerdotal 
autocracy would have formed to prevent all movement in 
the world, in thought, science and art. 

Gregory VII desired four things. He wished to deliver 
the papal throne from German suzerainty ; to reform the 
Church in its manners and discipline ; to render it every- 
where independent of the temporal power ; and, lastly, to 
govern the laity, both peoples and kings, in the name and 
interest of their salvation. The first point was attained by 
the decree of Nicholas II and the refusal to submit the 
election of Popes to the imperial sanction. The second 



230 HISTOIRY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a/d 1073-1122. 

object was favored by many acts of Gregory VII for the 
ret'ormation of the clergy and the abolition of simony. To 
accomplish the third, the non-clerical princes had been 
forbidden to bestow, and the clergy to receive from their 
hands, the investiture of any ecclesiastical benefice. The 
last was to be brought about by the pontiff's haughty 
interference in the government of kingdoms. 

In the attempt to render the Church independent of the 
empire, there arose between the two the famous so-called 
quarrel of investitures. 

During the minority of Henry IV, all sorts of disorders 
had invaded the German priesthood. Gregory, imputing 
these scandals to the unhappy selection of prelates, called 
upon Henry to renounce the bestowal of ecclesiastical digni- 
ties and to appear at Rome to justify himself for his pri- 
vate conduct. The emperor retorted by having Gregory 
deposed by twenty-four bishops in the Synod of Worms 
(1076). Thereupon the Pope launched against him a bull 
of excommunication and forfeiture. The Saxons and Sua- 
bians, traditional enemies of the Franconian house, executed 
this sentence in the Diet of Tribur, which suspended the 
emperor from his functions, and threatened him with depo- 
sition if he did not become reconciled to Eome. Henry 
yielded. He hurried to Italy and sought the Pope in the 
castle of Canossa on the lands of the Countess Matilda, who 
was an adherent of the Holy See. Barefoot in the snow he 
waited three days for an audience with the pontiff. He 
retired, absolved but furious, and opened war. The battle 
of Volkshein, where his rival, Rodolph of Suabia, was slain 
by Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine and 
bearer of the imperial standard, made him master of Ger- 
many (1080). He could then return to Italy in triumph. 
The Countess Matilda was desj^oiled of part of her posses- 
sions, Rome was captured and the bishop of Ravenna was 
appointed Pope as Clement III. Gregory himself would 
have fallen into the hands of the man he had so contemned, 
if the Normans who had just conquered southern Italy had 
not come to his aid. He died among them, saying, " Because 
I have loved justice and chastised iniquity, therefore I die 
in exile " (1085). 

Concordat of Worms (1122). — Henry IV was victor, but 
the Church roused his own son against him and he perished 
miserably. Nevertheless it was this parricidal son, Henry V, 



A.D, 1122-1150.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 231 

who put an end to the quarrel of investitures. The Con- 
cordat of Worms equably settled the dispute (1122). It as- 
signed to the temporal sovereign, the emperor, the temporal 
investiture by the sceptre, and to the spiritual sovereign, 
the Pope, the spiritual investiture by the cross and ring. 
The plan of Gregory VII had only half succeeded, for the 
bond of vassalage was still unbroken which bound the clergy 
to the prince. But in its members, if not in its head, the 
church remained within the state. 

As chief of the empire this same Henry inherited the 
fiefs of Countess Matilda and as her nearest relative her 
allodial property. Thus he became possessor of all her 
rich estates. The nearest approach to feudal power in the 
peninsula was thus annihilated. But the Franconian dy- 
nasty became extinct with this emperor (1125). Despite 
all the efforts of this house to weaken the general feudal 
system in Germany by conceding direct dependence on the 
crown to a host of petty seigniories and by raising many 
towns to the rank of imperial cities, it had tolerated the 
existence of several powerful vassals, and above all of the 
Welfs, dukes of Bavaria, and of the Hohenstaufens, dukes 
of Suabia. Thus Lothaire II (1125-1138) bore himself hum- 
bly in the presence of these princes. He was no less humble 
before the Pope who, when placing upon his head the 
imperial crown, claimed to confer it as a benefice. 

The Hohenstaufens. — The house of Suabia ascended the 
throne with Conrad III. He obtained a firm footing by de- 
stroying the power of the Welfs through • the spoliation of 
Henry the Proud, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. His unfor- 
tunate part in the second crusade and his death soon after 
his return prevented the completion of his w^ork. But his 
son, Frederick I, Barbarossa, caused the imperial power once 
more to appear with brilliancy in Italy. Instead of the 
feudal system which no longer existed there, had arisen a 
medley of petty lordships and of cities organized into repub- 
lics with their senates, consuls and general assemblies. This 
political system extended even to Rome, whence Arnaldo 
de Brescia expelled Pope Innocent II (1141). Frederick 
speedily destroyed this beginning of Italian independence 
and burned Arnaldo at the stake. But by making his author- 
ity too evident he alienated the republics and the Pope 
himself whom he had just restored. His despotic principles, 
enunciated at the Diet of Roncalia by the legists of the 



232 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1150-1200. 

Bolognese school, caused alarm. Milan revolted against his 
magistrates. He razed it to the ground and abandoned its 
ruins to the neighboring rival cities. Hardly had he re- 
turned to Germany, when the Lombard League was formed 
behind him. It was joined by Pope Alexander III, the 
Defender of Italian Liberty. Frederick, who marched has- 
tily to destroy the coalition, was completely overthrown at 
Legnano (1176). 

Seven years later the Treaty of Constance definitely reg- 
ulated the quarrel between the empire and Italy, as the 
Concordat of Worms had regulated that between the empire 
and the papacy. The cities retained the rights which they 
had usurped. They could levy armies, protect themselves 
with fortifications, exercise civil and criminal jurisdiction 
within their boundaries and form confederations with one 
another. The emperor retained only the right of confirm- 
ing their consuls by his legates and of placing a judge of 
appeals for certain causes in each city. 

Barbarossa had not everywhere been so unsuccessful. The 
kings of Denmark and Poland acknowledged his suzerainty. 
Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, was deprived 
of his dominions. Forei.Qfn ambassadors attended the splen- 
did diets convoked by the emperor, at the most celebrated 
of which, in Mayence, 40,000 knights appeared. 

His son Henry succeeded (1190). As the husband of Con- 
stance, daughter and heiress of Roger II, king of Sicily, he 
established the house of Suabia in southern Italy. Thus 
an equivalent was gained for loss of authority in the north, 
and the Holy See was enveloped on all sides. Innocent III 
(1198-1216) resolved to avert this new danger. He had 
excommunicated the kings of France, Aragon and Norway 
for transgression of the moral code, and had set another 
portion of Christendom again in motion by preaching the 
fourth crusade. When he beheld kings abase themselves 
before him and nations rise at his voice, the Pope naturally 
believed himself strong enough to humble the ambitious 
house which persistently cherished the memory of imperial 
supremacy over Rome. In Germany he supported Otto of 
Brunswick against Philip of Suabia, and the fierce struggle 
of the Guelphs, or partisans of the Church, against the 
Ghibellines, or partisans of the empire, began. Displeased 
with Otto, who when rid of his rival made the same claims 
upon Italy, Innocent turned again to the house of Suabia 



A.D. 1200-1240.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 233 

and caused the young Frederick II, son of Henry VI, to 
be recognized as emperor on condition of his abandoning 
the Two Sicilies. But this prince, a lover of art and letters 
and a man of easy character, retained those provinces where 
was his favorite residence. In his palaces at Naples, Mes- 
sina and Palermo, he and his chancellor, Pierre des Vignes, 
vigorously organized his Italian kingdom. To possess a 
constant defence against the thunders of the Church, he en- 
gaged an army of Saracens in his service. 

The Pope beheld with affright the firm grip of this Ger- 
man upon Italy. In the south, Frederick held his Kingdom 
of the Two Sicilies. In the centre he enjoyed the posses- 
sions of the Countess Matilda. In the north his title of 
emperor conferred both influence and rights. To remove 
the obnoxious ruler to a distance, the Pope ordered him to 
take the cross. When Frederick hesitated, he threatened 
him with an anathema if he did not fulfil the vow he had 
taken. Frederick set out on the crusade, but he did not 
fight. A treaty with the sultan of Egypt threw open to 
him the gates of the Holy City (1228). He crowned him- 
self king of Jerusalem and then hastened to return. His 
absence had afforded Gregory IX, the energetic old man 
who then occupied the throne of Saint Peter, time to re- 
organize the Lombard League, to persuade the young prince 
Henry to rebel against his father and to hurl an adventurer 
with an army upon the kingdom of Naples. Frederick 
overcame all his adversaries. The defeat of the Lombards 
at Corte Nuova seemed to place Italy at his feet. 

The Pope alone did not yield. He issued a sentence of 
excommunication and deposition against him, and offered 
the imperial crown to Eobert of Artois, brother to the king 
of France. Louis IX refused this proffer to his family, and 
reproached the Pope with wishing "to trample all sover- 
eigns together with the emperor under his feet." Gregory 
then sought the support of a council which he convoked in 
the church of Saint John Lateran. At Melloria the vessels 
of Frederick defeated the Genoese fleet, which was carry- 
ing the Fathers to the council, and two cardinals together 
with bishops and abbots were captured. Gregory died of 
grief. His successor. Innocent IV, escaped from Rome in 
disguise, assembled at Lyons a council which excommuni- 
cated Frederick II, and caused a crusade against him to be 
preached. When the tidings was told the emperor, he 



234 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1240-1250. 

seized his crown, planted it more firmly on his head and 
exclaimed, " It shall not fall until rivers of blood have 
flowed." He appealed to the sovereigns of Europe : " If I 
perish, you all perish." He hurled his Saracens upon cen- 
tral Italy while his ally, Eccelino de Eoraano, the tyrant of 
Padua, fought and butchered in the north. But the cities 
everywhere rose at the call of the priests and monks. 
From one end of the peninsula to the other, the G-uelphs 
flew to arms in behalf of the Holy Father who for his own 
freedom needed that Italy also be free. In vain did Fred- 
erick humble himself. . He offered to abdicate, to go and 
die in the Holy Land, to divide his heritage on condition 
that it should be left to his children. Innocent remained 
immovable, and pursued the annihilation of ''that race of 
vipers." The struggle was becoming still more envenomed 
when the emperor died suddenly (1250). His death 
heralded the fall of German domination in Italy and the 
beginning in the peninsula of a new period, that of inde- 
pendence. 




lic/- 







Uopyriji.t. mi. I,) T. y. 



A.D. 1059-1095.1 CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 235 



THE CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND IN THE WEST 

The First Crusade in the East (1096-1099): — During the 
Middle Ages there were two worlds, that of the Gospel and 
that of the Koran, the one in the north and the other in the 
.south. At their points of contact in Spain and toward 
Constantinople they had long been engaged in conflict. At 
the end of the eleventh century the two religions grappled, 
and their encounter is called the crusades. 

Mussulman Asia had passed from the power of the 
Arabs into that of the Seldjuk Turks. Under Alp Arslan 
(1063) and Malek Shah (1075) they had conquered Syria, 
Palestine and Asia Minor. At the death of Malek Shah 
his empire was divided into the sultanates of Syria, Persia 
and Kerman, to which must be added that of Roum in Asia 
Minor. The empire of Constantinople, the bulwark of 
Christendom, had wavered at this new invasion. For a 
time it seemed hardly able to resist its enemies, despite the 
vigor it manifested under several emperors of the Macedo- 
nian and Comnenan dynasties and the victories it had 
gained over the Persians, Bulgarians, Russians and Arabs. 

At the very beginning of the century, Pope Sylvester II 
had suggested to the Western peoples the idea of delivering 
the Holy Sepulchre (1002). Pilgrimages became more fre- 
quent. Pilgrims by thousands visited the sacred places and 
on their return inflamed Europe with stories of outrages 
and cruelties endured from the Mussulmans. Gregory VII 
took up the project of Sylvester, and Urban II put it into 
execution. At Piacenza he convened a council where am- 
bassadors appeared from Constantinople. At a second 
council at Clermont in Auvergne, an innumerable multitude 
assembled. Supporting his own majestic eloquence by the 
popular eloquence of Peter the Hermit, who had just re- 
turned from the Holy Land, Urban carried the immense 
host captive. With the cry " God wills it ! " each man 
fastened to his garments the red cross, the emblem of the 



236 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a. d. 1095-1099. 

crusade (1095). Feasants, villagers, old men, women and 
children set out, pell-mell, under the lead of Peter the 
Hermit and of a petty noble, Walter the Penniless. 
Almost the whole multitude perished in Hungary, and 
those who reached Constantinople fell under the cimeter 
in Asia Minor. 

In the following year the crusade of the nobles started, — 
more prudent, better organized, more military. Four great 
armies, composed chiefly of Frenchmen, departed by three 
different routes. Those nnder Godfrey of Bouillon, Bald- 
win of Bourg and Baldwin of Flanders followed the track 
of Peter the Hermit. Those under Raymond, Count of 
Toulouse, passed through Lombardy and Slavonia. The 
rest, commanded by Bobert Duke of JSTormancly, son of 
William I of England, Stephen of Blois and Hugh the 
Great of Vermandois went to Brindisi to join the Italian 
Normans, and thence crossed the Adriatic, Macedonia and 
Thrace. These 600,000 men were to meet at Constantinople. 

With distrust the Emperor Alexis received into his 
capital guests so uncouth as the warriors of the W^est. As 
soon as possible he had them transported beyond the Bos- 
phorus. They first laid siege to Nica^a at the entrance to 
Asia Minor, but allowed the Greeks to plant their banner 
on the walls when the city had been forced to surrender. 
Kilidj Arslan, the sultan of Roum, tried to arrest their 
march, but was vanquished at Dorylaeum (1097). On enter- 
ing arid Phrygia hunger and thirst decimated the invaders. 
Nearly all the horses perished. Bitter dissensions already 
divided the leaders. Nevertheless Baldwin who led the 
vanguard took possession of Edessa on the upper Eu- 
phrates, and the bulk of the army captured Tarsus and 
arrived before Antioch. The siege was long and the suffer- 
ings of the invaders were cruel. At last the city opened 
its gates to the intrigues of Bohemond, who caused himself 
to be appointed its prince ; but the besiegers were besieged 
in their turn by 200,000 men who had been brought up by 
Kerboga, the lieutenant of the caliph of Bagdad. By a 
marvellous victory the Christians cut their way out and 
marched at last upon Jerusalem, which they entered on 
July 15, 1099, after a siege no less distressing than that of 
Antioch. 

Godfrey was elected king, but would accept only the 
title of defender and baron of the Holy Sepulchre, " refus- 



A.D. 1099-1147.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 237 

ing to wear a crown of gold on the spot where the King of 
kings had worn a crown of thorns." The conquest was 
assured by the victory of Ascalon over an Egyptian army 
which had come to recapture Jerusalem. 

The majority of the crusaders returned home. The little 
kingdom of Jerusalem organized for defence and gave itself 
a constitution in accordance with feudal principles, which 
were thus transported ready made into Asia. Godfrey of 
Bouillon caused the Assizes of Jerusalem to be drawn up, 
a code which gives a complete picture of the feudal system. 
There were established as fiefs the principalities of Edessa 
and Antioch, afterward increased by the county of Tripoli 
and the marquisate of Tyre, and the lordships of Nablous, 
Jaffa, Ramleh and Tiberias. The country was subjected to 
three judicial authorities : the court of the king, of the 
viscount of Jerusalem, and the Syrian tribunal for natives. 
The defence of the state was committed to two great mili- 
tary institutions : the Order of the Hospitallers of Saint 
John of Jerusalem, founded by Gerard de Martigues in 
1100, and that of the Templars, founded in 1148 by Hugues 
de Payens. Through the influence of these institutions the 
kingdom of Jerusalem continued its conquests under the 
first two successors of Godfrey, Baldwin I (1100-1118) and 
Baldwin II (1118-1131). Caesarea, Ptolemais, Byblos, 
Beyrout, Sidon and Tyre were captured. But after these 
two reigns discord brought about decline and Noureddin, 
sultan of Syria, seized Edessa whose inhabitants he put to 
the sword (1144). 

Second and Third Crusades (1147-1189). —This bloody 
disaster induced Europe to renew the crusade. Saint Ber- 
nard roused Christendom by his eloquent appeals. In the 
great assembly of Vezelay Louis VII, who wished to 
expiate the death of 1300 persons burned by him in 
the church of Vitry, his wife, Eleanor of Guyenne 
and a throng of great vassals and barons assumed the 
cross. The emperor of Germany, Conrad III, was the 
first to set out. He reached the heart of Asia Minor, but 
losing his whole army in the defiles of the Taurus 
returned almost alone to Constantinople, where Louis VII 
had just arrived. The latter was no more fortunate, though 
following the coast-line so as to avoid the dangerous soli- 
tudes of the interior. In Cilicia he abandoned the mass of 
pilgrims, who fell under the arrows of the Turks, and with 



238 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1147-1202. 

his nobles embarked on Greek ships, arrived at Antioch, 
and then at Damascus which the crusaders besieged in 
vain. He brought back from this expedition only his fatal 
divorce. 

The capture of Jerusalem (1187) by Saladin, who had 
united Egypt and Syria under his sceptre, provoked the 
third crusade. The Pope imposed on all lands, including 
even those which belonged to the Church, a tax called 
Saladin's tithe. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Philip 
Augustus of France and Richard CcBur de Lion of England, 
the three most powerful sovereigns of Europe, set out with 
large armies (1189). Barbarossa reached Asia by way of 
Hungary and Constantinople and had arrived in Cilicia, 
when he was drowned in the Selef. Nearly the whole of 
his army was destroyed. Philip and Richard made a more 
prosperous journey by a new route, the sea. The former 
embarked at Genoa, the latter at Marseilles. They put 
into port in Sicily and began to quarrel. Richard halted 
again at Cyprus to depose a usurper, Isaac Comnenus, and 
rejoined Philip under the walls of Saint Jean d'Acre, 
which the crusaders besieged. They wasted there more 
than two years, wholly engrossed in feats of chivalry 
against the Saracens and in quarrels with each other. 
Philip found these discords a pretext to return to France. 
Richard, who remained in Palestine, was unable to recapt- 
ure Jerusalem. On his way back a tempest wrecked his 
ship on the Dalmatian coast. He wished to cross Germany 
and regain England overland. Leopold, Duke of Austria, 
whose banner he had caused to be contemptuously cast into 
the trenches of Saint Jean d'Acre, kept him in prison until 
he paid an enormous ransom. 

Fourth Crusade (1202). Latin Empire of Constantinople 
(1204-1261). — Innocent III could not resign himself to 
leaving Jerusalem in the hands of the infidels. He caused 
a fourth crusade to be preached by Foulques, cure of 
Neuilly, who persuaded many nobles of Flanders and Cham- 
pagne to assume the cross. Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, 
and Boniface II, Marquis of Montferrat, were the leaders. 
The crusaders sent envoys to Venice to ask for ships. Of 
this embassy Geoffroy de Villehardouin, the historian of 
that crusade, was a member. Venice first secured payment 
in hard cash, and then exacted of the crusaders that they 
should capture for her the stronghold of Zara, which be- 



A.D. 1202-1248.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 239 

longed to the king of Hungary, Already once diverted 
from its religious purpose, the crusade was again turned 
aside by Alexis, the son of a deposed Greek emperor, who 
oifered them immense rewards if they would reinstate his 
father. They placed him and his father for a time upon 
the throne. The great capital was then a prey to anarchy. 
Forgetting Jerusalem, the original object of their march, 
they seized Constantinople for themselves and parcelled out 
the whole empire as booty. Baldwin was appointed em- 
peror. The Venetians, seizing one quarter of Constan- 
tinople, most of the islands of the Archipelago and the 
best harbors, dubbed themselves "lords of a quarter and 
half a quarter" of the Greek Empire. The Marquis of 
Montferrat became king of Thessalonica. The Asiatic 
provinces were given to the Count of Blois. A lord of 
Corinth, a duke of Athens and a prince of Achaia were 
created. Some Greek princes of the Comnenan family re- 
tained a few fragments of the empire, such as the princi- 
palities of Trebizond, Napoli of Argolis, Epirus and Mcsea. 
The Latin Empire of Constantinople lasted fifty-seven 
years, and was then overthrown by the Greeks, and the 
Latins expelled. 

Last Crusades (1229-1270). Saint Louis. — Jerusalem had 
not been delivered. The barons of the Holy Land con- 
stantly implored the aid of Christendom. Andrew II of 
Hungary led a fifth but fruitless crusade against Egypt. 
The sixth was commanded by Frederick II, who took ad- 
vantage of the terror with which the approach of Tartar 
hordes inspired Malek Kamel, and obtained from him with- 
out combat a truce for ten years, together with the restitu- 
tion of the Holy City, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Sidon. He 
even crowned himself king of Jerusalem (1229). Hardly 
had he taken his departure when the Turkomans, fleeing be- 
fore the Mongols of Genghis Khan, hurled themselves upon 
Syria, at Gaza cut in pieces an army of crusaders and seized 
the Holy City. At this news Pope Innocent IV tried to 
arouse Europe and launch it against the infidels. But the 
crusading spirit, waxing weaker day by day, found no echo 
save in the soul of Saint Louis, king of France. During an 
illness he made a vow to go and deliver Jerusalem. Despite 
the entreaties of his whole court and even of his mother, the 
devout Blanche of Castile, he embarked at Aigues Mortes 
with a powerful army (1248). He wintered at Cyprus. The 



240 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1248-1270. 

crusaders had comprehended that the keys of Jerusalem 
were in Cairo. When spring came they set sail for Egypt 
and mastered Damietta. But their sluggishness ruined 
everything. Insubordination burst out in the army. De- 
bauches produced epidemics. Delayed a month at the canal 
of Aschmoum, after crossing it they suffered the disaster of 
Mansourah through the imprudence of Robert of Artois. 
During the retreat they were decimated by the pest and 
harassed by the Mussulmans who captured their king, 
Saint Louis. He paid a million gold besants as ransom, 
then crossed over to Palestine and remained there three 
years, employing his influence in maintaining harmony and 
his resources in fortifying the cities. * 

He had managed this great expedition very badly. Six- 
teen years later he attempted another. In 1270 his brother 
Charles of Anjou, king of the Two Sicilies, persuaded him 
that the Tunisian Mussulmans must be attacked, whose 
threats made him anxious as to the fate of the Sicilian 
kingdom. Under the walls of Tunis the Christians en- 
countered famine and pestilence from which Saint Louis 
died. The princes who had accompanied him were paid 
to withdraw, and Charles of Anjou made a treaty advan- 
tageous to his Sicilian subjects. This crusade was the 
last. 

Results of the Crusades in the East. — Those great expedi- 
tions, in which France played the principal part, devoured 
uncounted multitudes and failed in their object. The Holy 
Land remained in the hands of the infidels. Still Europe 
and Asia were brought closer together. In Europe itself, 
the Christian nations formed relations, and in each country 
all classes of the population became somewhat united. The 
crusades developed commerce and enlarged the horizon of 
thought. They opened the East to Christian travellers and 
to the merchants of Marseilles, Barcelona, Pisa, Genoa and 
Venice. To manufactures they revealed new processes and to 
the soil new plants such as the mulberry, maize and sugar- 
cane. Feudalism was shaken by the gaps made in its ranks, 
and by the forced sale of lands to which many crusaders had 
recourse to obtain the money requisite for the journey. The 
communal movement derived greater strength, and the en- 
franchisement of the serfs received a broader interpretation. 
Finally, the crusades gave birth to the Knights Templars 
and to the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem who de- 



A.D. 10i»5-r2a0.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 241 

fended the Holy Land, as well as to the Knights of the 
Teutonic Order, who soon quitted the East to subdue and 
convert the pagans on the shores of the Baltic. Heraldry 
as a means of distinguishing individuals and companies was 
a product of the crusades. 

The new religious orders which arose were an effect of 
the religious movement of which the crusades were them- 
selves the consequence, and the mendicant friars are to be 
placed beside the soldier monks. The Franciscans who 
gave rise to the Recollets, the Cordeliers, and the Capucins, 
date from 1215; the Dominicans, or Jacobins, from 1216. 
Removed from the control of the bishops, they were the 
army of the Holy See. Possessing nothing, living on alms, 
they roamed the world over to carry the Gospel wherever a 
too wealthy clergy no longer carried it, amid the poor, 
along the highways, at the cross-roads and in the public 
squares. The bishops disputed the right of the Pope to 
grant to the mendicant friars the privilege of preaching and 
filling the functions of parish priests. To them Saint 
Thomas Aquinas replied : " If a bishop can delegate his 
powers in his diocese, the Pope has the right to do the same 
in Christendom." It will be seen that ultramontanism is 
not a thing of yesterday. It is not Christian in its incep- 
tion, for the Gospel knows it not ; but it is the fundamental 
principle and the necessary logic of Roman Catholicism. 

Crusades of the West. — In the East the Crusades failed. 
In the West they succeeded ; for they founded the two great 
states of Prussia and Spain and accomplished the political 
unity of France. 

In the interval between the first and second crusades, 
the burghers of Bremen and Lubeck founded in the Holy 
Land a hospital under the charge of Germans for the bene- 
fit of their fellow-countrymen. Everything at Jerusalem 
was taking on a religious and military form. The attend- 
ants of this hospital were transformed into an armed cor- 
poration, called the Teutonic Order, which speedily acquired 
great possessions, so that its chief was raised by Frederick 
II to the rank of prince of the empire. To this order a 
regent of Poland in 1230 intrusted the task of conquer- 
ing and converting the Borussi or Prussians between the 
Niemen and the Vistula. They were successful in this 
undertaking and built the fortresses of Konigsburg and 
Marienburg to overawe the defeated tribe. The Knights of 



242 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1200-1215. 

Christ, or Brothers of the Sword, subjugated the neighbor- 
ing regions at the same time. When they united with the 
Teutonic Order, Prussia, Esthonia, Livonia and Courland, 
hitherto barbarous and pagan, were attached to the Euro- 
pean community. Until the fifteenth century the Order 
exercised a preponderating power in the north. In the 
sixteenth century its Grand Master secularized this ecclesi- 
astical principality, which then fell to the Electors of 
Brandenburg. 

The crusade against the heathen of the Baltic caused civi- 
lization to germinate in a savage country. The crusade 
which Simon de Montfort directed against the Albigenses 
stifled civilization in a rich and prosperous region. 

The population of southern France was the mixed off- 
spring of different races. There religious opinions had 
sprung up which differed greatly from the prevailing faith. 
The people were called Albigenses from their capital, Albi. 
Innocent III resolved to stamp out this nest of heresy. To 
Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, he sent the monk Pierre 
de Castelnau as a papal legate to demand the expulsion of 
the heretics, but he obtained no satisfaction. Raymond 
was then excommunicated (1207), whereupon he employed 
threats. One of his knights assassinated the legate at a 
ford of the Rhone. The monks of Citeaux at once preached 
a crusade of extermination. The same indulgences were 
promised as for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As the perils 
were less and the profit more sure, men rushed against the 
Albigenses in crowds. Among their assailants were the 
Duke of Burgundy, the Counts of Nevers, Auxerre and 
G-eneva, the bishops of Reims, Sens, Rouen and Autun 
and many other dignitaries. Simon de Montfort, a petty 
noble from the vicinity of Paris, ambitious, fanatical and 
cruel, was the chief commander. The war was merciless. 
At Beziers 30,000 persons were butchered and everywhere 
else in proportion. Raymond VI was defeated at Castel- 
naudary and Pedro II, king of Aragon, was slain at the 
battle of Muret (1213). The Council of the Lateran be- 
stowed the fiefs of the Count of Toulouse upon Simon de 
Montfort. Southern France was crushed by the French of 
the north. The brilliant civilization of those provinces was 
smothered by rude hands. Like a funereal and ever-men- 
acing spectre, the tribunal of the Inquisition established 
itself on the blood-stained ruins, a tribunal that has slain so 



A.D. 1215-1229.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 243 

many human beings without succeeding in destroying liberty 
of thought. 

Louis, the son of Philip Augustus, came finally to take 
part in this crusade. In their misery these people of Langue- 
doc had bethought themselves of the king of France. Mont- 
pellier surrendered to him. When Simon de Montfort was 
slain at the siege of Toulouse, his son ceded to Louis IX 
(1229) the provinces which the Pope had given his father, 
but which he could not retain amid the universal execration 
of his subjects. Thus neither Montfort nor his race profited 
from this great iniquity. The entire political benefit of the 
crusade accrued to the house of France, which had at first 
remained a stranger to it. 

When Charles Martel and Pepin the Short expelled the 
Arabs from France, they were satisfied with driving them 
over the Pyrenees into the Iberian peninsula. There Mus- 
sulmans and Christians found themselves constantly facing 
each other. Thus the history of Spain through the Middle 
Ages is that of a crusade six centuries long. After the bat- 
tle of Xeres in 711, Pelayo and his comrades took refuge 
in the Asturias, behind the Cantabrian Pyrenees, where 
Gihon was their first capital. Oviedo became their capital 
in 760, when they had advanced a step toward the south. 
Still later it was Leon whose name the kingdom appropri- 
ated. Charlemagne protected them. From the Marches, 
which he founded north of the Ebro, emerged the Christian 
states of Navarre and Barcelona, between which the lords 
of Aragon and the counts of Castile founded fiefs which 
were to become mighty kingdoms. So along the north of 
Spain there was a series of Christian states, buttressed upon 
the mountains like fortresses, yet advancing in battle array 
toward the south. At the end of the ninth century Alphonso 
the Great, king of Oviedo, had already attained and passed 
the Douro. In the tenth century the caliphate of Cordova 
showed fresh vigor. The Christians fell back in turn before 
the victorious sword of Abderrahman III, who defeated 
them at Simancas. Likewise they were worsted by the 
famous Almanzor, who wrested from them all the places on 
the banks of the Ebro and Douro including Leon itself. 
But when this victor of fifty battles had himself suffered 
defeat at Calatanazor (998), the power of the caliphate fell 
with him. In the eleventh century the caliphate of Cordova 
was broken and the Christians drew closer together. San- 



244 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1000-1108. 

cho III, king of Navarre, about 1000, acquired Castile by 
marriage and gave it together with the title of king to his 
second son, Ferdinand, who married a daughter of the king, 
of Leon (1035). In the same manner he erected the county 
of Jacca or Aragon into a kingdom for his third son, 
Ramiro II, while the eldest, Garcias, inherited Navarre. 

Thus four Christian kingdoms were founded and united 
by family alliances. Three, Navarre, Castile and Aragon, 
belonged to the sons of Sancho. The fourth, Leon, remained 
separate, but the male line of the descendants of Felayo be- 
coming extinct, the Council of the Asturias gave the crown 
to Ferdinand, thereby uniting Leon and Castile (1037). 
Internal affairs caused the Spaniards to forget for a time 
their struggle against the Moors, but when the holy war 
became popular in Europe Alphonso VI began again to 
carry forward the cross. In 1085 he seized Toledo, which 
once more became the capital and metropolis as it had been 
under the Visigoths. Henceforth the Christians, who had 
set out from the Asturias, were established in the heart of 
the peninsula. Five years later Henry of Burgundy, great 
grandson of Robert king of France, wdio had distinguished 
himself at the taking of Toledo, took possession of Oporto 
at the mouth of the Douro, which was erected for him into 
a county of Portugal by Alphonso. Almost simultaneously 
the famous Cid Rodrigo de Rivar, the hero of Spanish 
romance, advancing from victory to victory along the 
Mediterranean, seized Valencia (1094). At last in 1118 
Alphonso I, king of Aragon, won a capital as king of 
Castile by mastering Saragossa. 

The Arabs, enervated, divided and consequently van- 
quished, called successively to their aid two hordes of Afri- 
can Moors. These were the Almoravides and Almohades, 
sectaries who claimed to simplify the religion of Mohammed. 
The former, summoned in 1086 by Aben Abed king of 
Seville, arrived under the leadership of their chief Yusuf, 
the founder of Morocco (1069), cut in pieces the Christian 
army at Zalaca and repaid themselves for this service at 
the expense of those who had called them thither. They 
even recaptured Valencia on the death of the Cid (1099), 
took possession of the Balearic Isles and in 1108 at Ucles 
won over Alphonso VI a battle as sanguinary as that of 
Zalaca. There however their successes ended. Toledo 
repulsed thera many times. Alphonso, son of Henry of 



A.D. 1108-1492.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 245 

Burgundy, who assumed before the combat the title of king 
of Portugal, won a complete victory over them at lurique 
(1139), which rendered him master of the banks of the 
Tagus and of several places beyond that river. 

The Almohades did not come from Morocco until the 
middle of the following century. When they made their 
appearance in 1210, 400,000 strong, all Europe took alarm. 
Pope Innocent III caused a crusade to be preached for the 
succor of the Spanish Christians. The Spanish kings formed 
a coalition and destroyed their enemies at the decisive 
battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, which ended the great inva- 
sions from Africa. This achievement had been largely aided 
by the Spanish military Orders of Alcantara, Calatrava and 
Saint James of Castile, and by the Portuguese Order of 
Evora. 

The domination of the Almohades had finally ended in 
bloody anarchy. Cordova, Seville, Murcia and many other 
places fell into the power of the king of Castile. Mean- 
while Jayme I, the Conqueror, king of Aragon, subjugated 
the kingdom of Valencia and the Balearic Islands (1244), 
and Portugal, regaining the province of Algarve in 1270, 
assumed its definite territorial form. At the close of the 
thirteenth century the Moors possessed only the little king- 
dom of Granada, which was completely surrounded by the 
sea and by the possessions of the king of Castile. But in 
this contracted space, recruited by their coreligionists whom 
the Christians expelled from the conquered cities, they main- 
tained themselves with a vigor which deferred their ruin 
for two centuries. Occupied with foreign affairs, the 
Spaniards suspended the holy war until 1492. 

The crusade of Jerusalem failed though it contributed 
general results to the civilization of the Middle Ages. The 
crusade of Spain, without consequence so far as the social 
state of Europe was then concerned, changed the face of 
that peninsula and reacted in the sixteenth century upon 
modern Europe. It wrested the country from the Moors 
to give it to the Christians. The little kingdom of Portu- 
gal supposed that it was pursuing the crusade beyond the 
seas when it discovered the Cape of Good Hope. In that 
war of eight centuries' duration, the kings of Castile and 
Aragon developed an ambition which impelled them as well 
as their subjects to many enterprises. Their military habits 
were to make them the mercenaries of Charles V and Philip 



246 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 

II, rather than the peaceful and active heirs of the manu- 
factures, the commerce and the brilliant civilization of the 
Arabs. 

Why did these two crusades result so differently ? Simply 
because of distance. Palestine adjoined the land of Mecca. 
Spain was in sight of Rome. Jerusalem, at the extreme 
limit of the Catholic world, was bound to remain in the 
hands of the Mussulmans, just as Toledo, the last stage of 
Islam in the West, was bound to fall into the hands of the 
Christians. Geography explains much in history. 



A.D. 987-1200.] SOCIETY IN 12TH AND 13TH CENTURIES 247 



XI 

SOCIETY IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH 
CENTURIES 

Progress in the Cities. — Since the fall of the Oarlovingian 
empire three facts have been noted: the establishment of 
feudalism, the struggle between the Pope and the emperor 
for the control of Italy and the domination of the Avorld, 
and lastly, the crusades. A fourth fact, resulting from the 
other three, in its turn had serious consequences. This was 
the reconstitution of the class of freemen. Let us indicate 
the character of this fact before returning to the special 
study of the states. 

As early as 987 the villeins of Normandy had risen. 
But feudalism was still too strong and they were crushed. 
Although the nobles retained the control of the country dis- 
tricts, the villeins in the cities became bold and audacious 
behind their walls, and because of their numbers. In 1067 
the city of Mans took arms against its lord. This was the 
beginning of that communal movement, which from the 
eleventh to the fourteenth century showed itself throughout 
Europe. Like Mans, cities in northern France and the 
Netherlands extorted from their civil or religious lords 
communal charters which assured to the inhabitants guar- 
antees for the security of person and property, and juris- 
diction to the municipal magistrates. These privileges, 
obtained generally by insurrection in the communes, were 
gained in the royal cities by concessions from the king. 
South of the Loire many cities retained or revived the 
organization which they had possessed under the Roman 
Empire^ By these different causes there was formed, little 
by little, under the shelter of these privileges and of the 
security they bestowed, a burgher class which grew rich 
through manufactures and commerce. It formed powerful 
corporations, filled the universities and acquired learning, 
especially of the laws, at the same time as wealth. Its 
merchants will be called by Saint Louis into his council. 



248 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1200-1300. 

Its jurists will guide the French kings in their struggle 
against feudalism. Its burgesses will enter the States 
General of Philip the Fair, and will then form an order in 
the kingdom as the Third Estate. 

In England the cities sent deputies to the parliament of 
1264. In the parliament of 1295, 120 cities and boroughs 
were represented. Italy early had her republics. The 
Lombard League, when victorious over Frederick Barbarossa, 
imposed on him the Treaty of Constance (1183), which legal- 
ized their encroachments. North of the Alps the emperor, 
with a view to weakening feudalism, made the cities depend 
directly upon himself. For the sake of mutual protection 
they formed unions among themselves, the most famous of 
which was the great commercial Hanseatic League whose 
banner waved from London to Novgorod. 

This progress in the city population brought about similar 
progress in the rural population. As early as the twelfth 
century serfs were admitted as witnesses in courts of jus- 
tice, and the Popes had demanded their emancipation. Thus 
enfranchisements became common, for the lords began to 
understand that they would be the gainers in having upon 
their lands industrious freemen, rather than serfs "who 
neglect their work and say they are working for others." 

The burghers, villeins and serfs found a powerful auxil- 
iary in Homan law, the study of which the kings encouraged 
as favorable to their authority. Based upon natural equity 
and common advantage, it permitted the legists to labor in 
a thousand ways for the overthrow of personal and terri- 
torial servitude, the two forms of bondage in the Middle 
Ages. In the thirteenth century began that sullen conflict 
between rational rights and feudal rights, which in France 
was destined to end only in the French Revolution of 1789. 

Intellectual Progress. — With more order in the state, 
more labor in the cities, more ease in families, other and 
intellectual wants arose, schools were multiplied, new 
branches of study introduced and national literatures 
begun. 

The twelfth century had resounded with the mighty 
rival voices of the Breton philosopher Abelard, who 
championed a certain degree of liberty of thought, and of 
Saint Bernard, the apostle of dogmatic authority. The 
thousands of scholars who thronged around Abelard were 
the beginning of the University of Paris. In 1200 the 



A..D. 1100-1300.] SOCIETY IN 12TH AND 13TH CENTURIES 249 

Studium, called later the University of Paris, was endowed 
by Philip Augustus with its first privileges, one of which 
made it accountable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals. 
It served as a model for Montpellier, Orleans, Oxford, 
Cambridge, Salamanca and many other famous seats. It 
soon became a centre of scholastic learning, an arena of 
ideas. Its opinion was authoritative in the gravest con- 
troversies, and the most eminent men issued from its ranks. 
The two recently created mendicant orders, the Dominicans 
and Franciscans, reckoned among their members men of 
genius like Saint Thomas Aquinas who in his Summa 
Tlieologim undertook to record all that is known touching 
the relations of God and man, and Saint Bonaventura, the 
Seraphic Doctor. We must also mention the German Albert 
the Great ; the Englishman Roger Bacon, a worthy prede- 
cessor of the other Bacon ; the Scotchman Duns Scotus ; and, 
lastly, the encyclopedist of that century, the author of the 
Speculum Majus, Vincent de Beauvais. 

But with the exception of Bacon, who discovered or in his 
writings hinted at the composition of gunpowder, at the 
magnifying-glass and the air-pump, they all lived upon the 
remnants of ancient learning and made no additions thereto. 
Thus old and new errors were popular. Men believed in 
astrology, or the influence of the stars upon human life, and 
in alchemy, which caused them to seek the philosopher's 
stone or the means of converting other metals into gold. 
Sorcerers abounded. 

National Literatures. — In proportion as the individuality 
of peoples took on shape, national literatures developed. The 
epic, or heroic ballad, indeed was declining. Martin of 
Troyes subsequent to 1160 spun out the legend of Arthur 
into a tedious, eight-syllabled poem, and Guillaume de Lorris, 
who died in 1260, wrote the Romance of the Rose, full of 
attenuated ideas and cold allegories. French prose had its 
birth with Geoffroy de Villehardouin whose quaint book. 
The Conquest of Constantinople, is still read, and with 
Joinville who after the seventh crusade composed his 
Memoirs in more finished style, thereby affording a fore- 
taste of Froissart. The literature of southern France after 
furnishing brilliant troubadours had perished, drowned in 
the blood of the Albigenses. 

German literature shone under the Hohenstaufens, but 
mostly as a reflection from the French. Wolfram von 



250 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1100-1300. 

Eschenbach in Suabia imitated the epic songs of the Car- 
lovingian or Arthurian cycles. The Nihelungenlied, 
however, reveals its distinctively German origin, but the 
meistersingers and minnesingers, whose theme was love, drew 
their inspiration from Provencal poetry. German prose is 
hardly visible in a few rare moments of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. In Italy Dante was born in 1265. Spain had her war- 
songs in the romances of Bernardo del Carpio, the children 
of Lara, and the Cid. England was still too much engrossed 
with welding into a single idiom the Saxon-German and the 
Norman-French to produce any marked literary works. 
Her first great poet, Chaucer, belongs to the following age. 

Architecture, the characteristic art of the Middle Ages, 
attained its perfection in the thirteenth century. Then it 
was simple, severe, grand, while in the following century 
it was to become florid and flamboyant. In France it pro- 
duced Notre Dame de Paris, Notre Dame de Chartres, the 
Sainte Chapelle, the cathedrals of Amiens, Reims, Strasburg, 
Bourges, Sens, Coutances and many more. Corporations of 
lay architects were formed. Lanfranc and Guillaume de 
Sens labored together in the construction of Canterbury 
cathedral. Pierre de Bonneuil went to Sweden to build 
the cathedral of Upsala (1258). Maitre Jean in the same 
century erected the cathedral of Utrecht and French artisans 
worked on that of Milan. 

The sculpture is heavy, but the stained glass windows of 
the churches were magnificent, and the miniature-painters 
embellished the missals with delicate masterpieces. 



FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 251 



XII 

FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 
(987-1338) 

First Capetians (987-1108). —While feudal Europe was 
thronging the roads which led to Jerusalem, the great mod- 
ern nations were assuming their outlines. Italy separated 
from Germany. France sought to separate herself from 
England, and Spain endeavored to rid herself of the Moors. 
The Capetian royal house was weak in the beginning, though 
it undertook the first internal organization of France. Hugh 
Capet spent his reign of nine years (987-996) in battling 
against the last representative of the Carlovingian family, 
and in seeking recognition in the south, wherein he did not 
succeed. His son Robert, crowned during his father's life 
so as to assure his succession, reigned piously although ex- 
communicated for having married Bertha, his relative. He 
was wise enough to refuse the offered crown of Italy, but 
inherited the duchy of Burgundy. Henry I and Philip I 
lived in obscurity. The latter took no part in the first 
crusade or in the conquest of England by his Norm*in vas- 
sals. In fact from the ninth to the twelfth century French 
royalty existed only in name, because the public power 
which should have rested in its hands had become local 
power exercised by all the great proprietors. This revolu- 
tion, which shattered the unity of the country for three 
centuries, was to be followed by another which would 
strive to unite the scattered fragments of French society 
and deprive the lords of the rights they had usurped. This 
revolution was to render the king the sole judge, sole ad- 
ministrator and sole legislator of the country. It began with 
Philip Augustus and Saint Louis, who restored a central gov- 
ernment. It was fully accomplished only under Louis XIY, 
because the Hundred Years' War (1338-1453) and the reli- 
gious wars of the sixteenth century interrupted this great 
internal work. 



252 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 110*- 

Louis the Fat (1108-1137).— The reign of Louis VI 
marked the first awakening of the Capetian royalty. That 
active and resolute prince put down in the neighborhood of 
Paris and the lie de France almost all the petty lords who 
used to descend from their donjon-keeps and pillage the 
merchants. He favored the formation of communities on 
the lands of his vassals. The example set by Mans in 1066 
was soon followed by many other cities. But Louis, though 
gladly aiding the cities against their lords and thereby en- 
feebling the latter, permitted no communes to arise on his 
own domains. He tried to force Henry I of England to 
cede Normandy to his nephew, Guillaume Cliton, but did 
not succeed. When Henry V emperor of Germany, son- 
in-law of the king of England, menaced France in 1124, 
Louis VI faced him with a powerful army wherein figured 
the men of the communes. In the north for a brief space 
he imposed Cliton upon the Flemings, who had just assas- 
sinated their count (1126). In the south he protected the 
bishop of Clermont against the Count of Auvergne. He 
compelled Guillaume IX, Duke of Aquitaine, to pay him 
homage and obtained for his son, Louis the Young, the hand 
of Eleanor, the heiress of that powerful lord. 

Louis VII (1137-1180). — By this marriage Louis VII 
added to the royal domain Aquitaine, Poitou, Limousin, 
Bordelais, Agenois and Gascony and acquired suzerainty 
over Auvergne, Perigord, La Marche, Saintonge and Angou- 
mois. But while fighting with the Count of Champagne, 
he burned 1300 persons in the church of Vitry. From 
remorse he joined the crusade. Incensed against his queen 
Eleanor, he divorced her on his return and gave her back 
the duchy of Guyenne, her dowry. This divorce was dis- 
astrous to the French monarchy and to national unity. 
Eleanor soon after married Henry Plantagenet, Count of 
Anjou, Duke of Normandy and heir to the crown of Eng- 
land. The little domain of the king of France was thus 
enveloped and threatened by an overwhelming force. Fort- 
unately this king was the suzerain and feudal law, which 
imposed respect on the vassal, still prevailed in its full 
force. Thus Henry, having attacked Toulouse, dared not 
prosecute the siege because Louis threw himself into the 
place. The French king also found supporters against his 
powerful adversary by allying himself with the clergy, 
whom the Englishman persecuted, and with the English 



1214.] FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 253 

princes, who revolted against their father. He welcomed 
Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, whom Henry's 
officers afterwards assassinated when the prelate, trusting 
the royal word, ventured to return to England. 

Philip Augustus (1180-1223). — This prince, the last king 
crowned before his accession, redeemed his father's faults. 
By persecuting and robbing the Jews, he obtained money. 
By giving up heretics and blasphemers to the Church, he 
gained the bishops. By forming a close alliance with the 
rebellious Richard, son of Henry IT, he increased the em- 
barrassments of the English king. At the same time safe 
but profitable petty wars secured for him Vermandais, Val- 
ois and Amiens. On returning from the third crusade he 
had an understanding with John Lackland, brother of Rich- 
ard Coeur de Lion, to despoil the latter. Richard, being 
released from prison, reached England in a rage and began 
a furious war in the south of France. Pope Innocent III 
interposed and caused the antagonists to sign a truce for 
five years. Two months later Richard was killed by an 
arrow at the siege of a castle of Limousin (1199). 

The crown of England reverted by right to the young 
Arthur, son of an elder brother of John Lackland. John 
usurped it, defeated his nephew and murdered him (1203). 
Philip Augustus summoned the murderer to appear before 
his court. John took good care not to come and Philip 
asserted his right under this forfeiture to take from him all 
the places of Normandy. That rich province, whence the 
conquerors of England had set out, then became a part of 
the royal domain and Brittany, which was its dependency, 
became a direct fief of the crown (1204). Poitou, Touraine 
and Anjou were occupied with equal ease. These were the 
most brilliant conquests that a king of France had ever 
made. By way of revenge John Lackland formed a coa- 
lition against France with his nephew, the Emperor Otto of 
Germany, and the lords of the Netherlands. Philip col- 
lected a great army, wherein the militia of the communes 
had their place, and gained at Bouvines a victory which 
had an immense influence throughout the whole land. This 
was the first national achievement of France (1214). 

Before Philip Augustus died, the French monarchy reached 
the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. The university had 
been founded, the supremacy of the royal jurisdiction vin- 
dicated" by the verdict of the peers against John Lackland, 



254 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1193- 

the kiDgdom subjected to a regular organization by division 
for administrative purposes, and Paris embellished, paved 
and surrounded by a wall. 

In 1193 Philip had married Ingeborg of Denmark. The 
morning after the wedding, he sent her away to give her 
place to Agnes de Meranie. This scandal called down the 
reprimand of Pope Innocent III, who long threatened " the 
eldest son of the Church " before striking any blow, but 
finally to conquer his resistance placed the kingdom under 
an interdict. Philip understood the danger of an open 
rupture with the Church. He separated from Agnes, and 
took back Ingeborg in the Council of Soissons (1201). 

Philip Augustus had nothing to do with the crusade 
against the Albigenses. 

Louis VIII (1223) and Louis IX (1226). ~ Louis YIII, who 
before his accession had been invited to England by the 
barons in rebellion against John, undertook a new expe- 
dition into the south. He captured Avignon, Nimes, Albi 
and Carcassonne, but died in an epidemic on his return 
(1126). His eldest son, Louis IX, was only nine years old. 
The barons endeavored to deprive the queen mother, 
Blanche of Castile, of the regency. But Blanche won over 
to her side the Count of Champagne and the war terminated 
to the advantage of the royal house. 

Henry III, King of England, headed a rebellion of the 
lords of Aquitaine and Poitou. Louis, victorious at Taille- 
bourg and Saintes, showed himself a generous conqueror 
and thereby secured the legal possession of what he re- 
tained. On condition of liege homage he consented (1259) 
to restore or to leave to the king of England, Limousin, 
Perigord, Quercy, Agenois, a part of Saintonge and the 
duchy of Guyenne; but he kept by virtue of treaty Nor- 
mandy, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou and Maine. He followed 
the same principle with the king of Aragon, ceding to him 
in full sovereignty the county of Barcelona, but compelling 
him to renounce his rights over his fiefs in France. Louis' 
virtues rendered him the arbitrator of Europe, and sur- 
rounded the French royalty with a halo of sainthood. He 
served as mediator between Innocent IV and Frederick II, 
and between the king of England and his barons in refer- 
ence to the statutes of Oxford. 

We have related the story of his two crusades in Egypt 
and Tunis. His domestic government aimed at putting an 



1300.] FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 255 

end to feudal disorder. In 1245 he decreed that in his do- 
mains there should be a truce between offender and offended 
for the space of forty days, and that the weaker might 
appeal to the king. He abolished the judicial duel in his 
domains. " What was formerly proved by battle shall be 
proved by witnesses or documents " (1260). He conceded 
a great place to the legists in the king's courts, the juris- 
diction of which he extended. He fixed the standard of 
the royal coinage, and was the first to summon the bur- 
gesses to his council. In short his reign may be regarded 
as that period of the Middle Ages most favorable to learn- 
ing, art and literature, and he is well called Saint Louis. 

Philip III (1270) and Philip IV the Fair (1285). — To- 
gether with the body of his father, Philip III brought back 
to France the cofin of his uncle Alphonse, whose death 
gave to him the county of Toulouse, Rouergue and Poitou, 
which were united to the royal domain. The marriage of 
his eldest son, Philip IV, with the heiress of Navarre and 
Champagne paved the way for the union of those provinces 
to the crown of France. The Massacre of the Sicilian 
Vespers (1282), which expelled the French from Sicily, 
brought about a war with Aragon which was finally profit- 
able to the French of Naples. The reign of Philip III is 
obscure. 

In 1292 a quarrel between some sailors caused difficulties 
with England of which Philip IV took advantage to have 
the confiscation of Guyenne declared by his Court of Peers. 
The war was at first carried on in Scotland and Flanders, 
one country being the ally of France and the other of Eng- 
land. Philip supported the Scottish chiefs, Baliol and 
Wallace, and occupied Flanders, whose count he sent to the 
tower of the Louvre. 

Quarrel between the King and the Pope. — To meet the 
expenses of these wars and of a constantly embarrassed 
government, much money was needed. Philip pillaged the 
Jews, debased the coinage at his will and taxed the clergy. 
Pope Boniface VIII imperiously demanded that the clergy 
should be exempt. He excommunicated whatever priest 
paid a tax without the order of the Holy See, and the im- 
poser of such tax, " whoever they may be " (1296). Philip 
retorted by forbidding any money to leave the kingdom 
without his permission, thus cutting off the revenues of the 
Holy See. The great jubilee of the year 1300 caused the 



256 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1300- 

pontiff to indulge illusions as to his power. To Philip he 
sent as his legate Bernard Saisset, the bishop of Pamiers. 
who seriously offended the king by his arrogance and in 
consequence was arrested. The Pope immediately (1301) 
launched the famous bull, Auscidta, Fill, to which Philip 
made an insolent reply. But feeling the need of national 
support for this conflict he convoked (1302) the first as- 
sembly of the States General, where clergy, barons and 
burgesses pronounced in his favor. Boniface answered this 
attack by the bull, Unam sanctam, which subordinated the 
temporal power to the spiritual power, and threatened to 
give the throne of France to the emperor of Germany. 

Thus the quarrel between the papacy and the empire 
seemed repeated. This time it was of brief duration. The 
weakening of the spiritual power could be measured by the 
rapidity of its defeat. In a new States General the jurist 
Guillaume de Nogaret accused the Pope of simony, heresy 
and other crimes. Guillaume de Plasian, another jurist, 
proposed that the king should himself convene a general 
council and cite Boniface before it. Nogaret started for 
Italy to take the person of the Pope into custody, and his 
companion, the Italian Colonna, with his iron gauntlet 
smote in the face the aged pontiff who died of grief (1303). 
The king was powerful enough to impose upon the car- 
dinals the election of one of his creatures as Benedict XI 
and afterwards of Clement V. They established the Holy 
See at Avignon, and began that series of Popes who re- 
mained at the mercy of France for seventy years (1309- 
1378). This period is called the Captivity of Babylon. 

Condemnation of the Templars. — Philip obtained from 
Clement V the condemnation of the memory of Boniface 
and of the Order of the Knights Templar, a militia which 
was devoted to the Holy See and whose immense posses- 
sions tempted the king. One morning the Templars were 
arrested throughout France without their offering any resist- 
ance. By legal process they were accused of the most 
monstrous crimes. Torture wrung from them such con- 
fessions as it always extorts. The States General, convoked 
at Tours, declared them worthy of death, and in 1309 fifty 
four were burned. In 1314 Jacques Molay, their Grand 
Master, suffered the same fate. 

Insurrection of the Flemings. — While royalty was tri- 
umphing over the great religious institutions of the Middle 



1328.] FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 261 

Ages, the people were beginning their struggle against the 
lords. The Flemings, driven to desperation by the extor- 
tions of the governor whom Philip IV had imposed upon 
them, rose in rebellion and inflicted upon the French nobil- 
ity the terrible defeat of Courtray (1302). This disaster 
Philip avenged by his victory of Mons-en-Puelle (1304). 
Nevertheless in Flanders he retained only Lille, Douai and 
Orchies. 

The Last Direct Capetians (1314-1328). The Salic Law.— 
Under Louis X the Quarrelsome a feudal reaction took place 
against the new tendencies of royal power. The ministers 
of the late king were its victims. The reign of Louis X is 
remembered only for the enfranchisement, after payment, 
of the serfs of the royal domain. On his death his brother 
Philip V claimed the crown to the detriment of Jeanne, his 
niece. He caused the States General to declare that "No 
woman succeeds to the crown of France." This declaration 
has been rigidly observed by the French monarchy and is 
improperly called the Salic Law. Philip V also died with- 
out male heirs (1322). His brother, Charles IV the Fair, 
succeeded and left only a daughter. The crown was given 
to a nephew of Philip IV, who founded the Valois dynasty 
(1328). But Edward III of England, by his mother Isa- 
bella the grandson of Philip the Fair, asserted a claim to the 
throne. Hence arose the Hundred Years' War. 



258 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1066- 



XIII 

FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 

Norman Invasion (1066). — After Canute the Great the 
conflict of the Saxons and Danes in England became com- 
plicated by a new element. The princes of Saxon origin, 
dispossessed by the Danes, found an asylum with the Nor- 
mans of France. When Edward the Confessor ascended 
the throne of Alfred the Great, he invited many of these 
Normans to his court and bestowed on them the principal 
bishoprics. The Saxons were jealous and their leader, the 
powerful Earl Godwin, succeeded in expelling the foreign- 
ers. His son Harold, who succeeded to his dignities and 
influence, conceived the unfortunate idea of visiting William, 
Duke of Normandy. His host, having him in his power, 
made him swear that he would aid William to secure the 
English throne on Edward's death. When Edward died, 
Harold was elected king by the wittenagemote and repu- 
diated the promise wrung from him by force. William, 
accusing him of perjury, undertook the conquest of England. 
He had the sanction of the Holy See, which complained that 
Peter's Pence was not paid. The invaders disembarked in 
the south, while Harold in the north was repelling a Nor- 
wegian invasion. A few days later the battle of Hastings 
(1066), in which Harold perished, delivered the country to 
the Normans. Nevertheless for a long time the Saxons did 
not resign themselves to their defeat. The Welsh and the 
Norwegians helped them to resist. In the Isle of Ely they 
formed the " camp of refuge." Rather than submit many 
of them became outlaws and lived in the forests, where the 
Norman lords hunted them like wild beasts. 

Strength of Norman Royalty in England. — William divided 
England among his comrades. The secular and ecclesias- 
tical domains of the Saxons were occupied by the conquerors, 
many of whom had been cowherds or weavers or simple 
priests on the continent, but now became lords and bishops. 
Between 1080 and 1086 a register of all the properties occu- 



1119.] FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 259 

pied was drawn up. This is the famous land-roll of Eng- 
land, called by the Saxons the Doomsday Book. On this 
land thus divided was established the most regular feudal 
body of Europe. Six hundred barons had beneath them 
60,000 knights. Over all towered the king who appro- 
priated 1462 manors and the principal cities and by exact- 
ing the direct oath from even the humblest knights attached 
every vassal closely to himself. 

This fact demands consideration for the whole history of 
England depends upon this partition, as does French history 
upon the inverse position occupied by the first Capetians. 
The English royalty, so strong on the morrow of the con- 
quest, soon became oppressive and forced the barons in 
self-defence to unite with the burgesses. Thus the nobles 
saved their own rights only by securing those of their hum- 
ble allies. In this manner by agreement between the bur- 
gher middle class and the nobles English public liberty was 
founded. Hence the nobility has always been popular in 
England. Liberty, the dominating sentiment of England, 
has created its noble institutions. The English have disre- 
garded equality, to which the French sacrifice everything. In 
France the oppressor was not the petty sovereign who wore 
the royal crown, but feudalism. Against it the oppressed, 
both king and people, united, but the chief who directed 
the battle kept for himself all the profits of victory. There- 
fore instead of general liberties was developed the absolute 
authority of the king. Before him villeins and nobles were 
equally dependent, and hence arose the common sentiment 
of equality. 

William II (1087). Henry I (1100). Stephen (1135). — 
William the Conqueror died in 1087. William II. Eufus, 
his second son, succeeded him in England and Robert, the 
elder son, in Normandy. Robert tried unsuccessfully to take 
England from his younger brother and then set out on the 
crusade. He was still absent when William Rufus died 
while hunting. Their youngest brother, Henry I, Fine 
Scholar, seized the crown. When Robert attempted to assert 
his rights, he was beaten at Tenchebray (1106) and Nor- 
mandy was reunited to England. Louis the Fat was also 
defeated, who had tried to secure that duchy at least for 
Guillaume Cliton, Robert's son (1119). 

Henry I intended to leave the throne to his daughter, 
Matilda, widow of the Emperor Henry Y and wife of 



260 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1135- 

Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. He charged liis nephew, Stephen 
of Blois, with protecting the empress, as she was called. 
Stephen usurped the crown for himself and defeated the 
Scotch, Matilda's allies, at the battle of the Standard. 
Afterwards she took him prisoner, but it was agreed that 
he should reign until his death and that his successor should 
be Henry of Anjou, surnamed Plantagenet, the empress' son, 

Henry II (1154). — By the renunciation of Matilda, his 
mother, he received Normandy and Maine. From his father 
he inherited Anjou and Touraine. Marrying Eleanor, the 
divorced wife of Louis the Young, he acquired Poitiers, 
Bordeaux, Agen and Limoges, together with suzerainty over 
Auvergne, Aunis, Saintonge, Angoumois, La Marche and 
Perigord. In 1154 he ascended the throne of England at 
the age of twenty-one, and finally married one of his sons 
to the heiress of Brittany. This power was formidable, 
but Henry II frittered it away in quarrels with his clergy 
and his sons. 

The clergy ever since the time of the Roman Empire 
had possessed the privilege of judging itself. When an 
ecclesiastic was accused, the secular tribunals could not try 
the case. The ecclesiastical courts alone could i:)ronounce 
judgment. In England William the Conqueror had granted 
to this privilege, called the benefit of the clergy, a very wide 
extension. Numerous abuses and scandalous immunity 
from punishment resulted therefrom. Henry II wished 
to end all this. Witli the object of awing the clergy, he 
appointed as archbishop of Canterbury his chancellor, 
Thomas a Becket, a Saxon by birth, and until then the 
most brilliant and docile of courtiers. Becket immediately 
changed character and became austere and inflexible. In 
a great meeting of bishops, abbots and barons the king had 
adopted the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), which com- 
pelled every priest accused of crime to appear before the 
ordinary courts of justice, forbade any ecclesiastic to leave 
the kingdom without the royal permission and intrusted to 
the king the guardianship and revenues of every vacant 
bishopric or benefice. Thomas a Becket opposed these 
statutes and fled to Erance to avoid the wrath of his former 
master. Louis VII having reconciled him to Henry, he 
returned to Canterbury but would make no concessions in 
the matter of ecclesiastical privileges. The patience of the 
king was exhausted and he let fall hasty words which four 



1215.] FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 261 

knights interpreted as a sentence of death. They murdered 
the archbishop at the foot of the altar (1170). This crime 
aroused such indignation against Henry that he was forced 
to abolish the Constitutions of Clarendon and do penance 
on the tomb of the martyr. 

He submitted to this humiliation only from fear of a 
popular uprising and excommunication at the very time 
when he was at war with his three eldest sons, Henry Duke 
of Maine and Anjou, Richard Coeur de Lion Duke of Aqui- 
taine and Geoff ry Duke of Brittany. Even his fourth son, 
John Lackland, eventually joined them. Henry II passed 
his last days in fighting his sons and the king of France 
who upheld the rebels. In 1171 he conquered the east and 
south of Ireland. 

Richard (1189). John Lackland (1199). — Richard who 
succeeded is that Coeur de Lion, or Lion-hearted, Avhom we 
have previously seen famous in the third crusade. This 
violent but brave and chivalrous prince was followed by his 
brother, John Lackland, a man of many vices and destitute 
even of courage. His crime in murdering his brother's son 
cost him Touraine, Anjou, Maine, Normandy and Poitou, 
and he foolishly renewed his father's quarrel with the 
Church. Refusing to accept the prelate whom the Pope 
had appointed archbishop of Canterbury, he was excom- 
municated and threatened with an invasion, as Innocent III 
had authorized Philip Augustus to conquer England. He 
humbled himself before the Holy See, promised tribute and 
acknowledged himself its vassal. Then he tried to take 
revenge for all his humiliations by forming against France 
the coalition which was overthrown at the battle of Rouvines. 
AVhile his allies were defeated in the north, John himself 
was vanquished in Poitou. On returning to his island, he 
found the barons in revolt, and was forced to sign the 
Magna Charta (1215). 

This memorable act is the foundation of English liberty. 
It guaranteed the privileges of the Church, renewed the 
limits marked out under Henry I to the rights of relief, 
of guardianship and marriage, which the kings had abused, 
promised to impose no tax in the kingdom without the con- 
sent of the great council, and lastly, established the famous 
law of habeas corpus which protected individual liberty 
and the jury law which assured to the accused a just trial. 
A commission of twenty -five guardians was charged with super- 



262 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1216- 

vising the execution of this charter and with compelling a 
reform of abuses. The danger past, John wished to tear up 
the charter and obtained the Pope's sanction thereto. The 
barons invited to England Louis, the son of Philip Augustus, 
who might have become king of the country if after the 
sudden death of John (1216) the barons had not preferred 
a child, his son, to the powerful heir of the French crown. 

Henry III (1216). — -The new reign was a long minority. 
In it we constantly behold weakness, perjury, fits of violence 
and every attendant circumstance to teach the nation the 
necessity and the means for restraining by institutions that 
royal will which was so little sure of itself. Abroad Henry 
III was defeated by Saint Louis at Taillebourg and Saintes. 
His brother Richard of Cornwall being elected emperor, 
played a ridiculous part in Germany and one costly for 
England. At home popular discontent increased at repeated 
violations of Magna Gharta, at the favor shown to the rela- 
tives of Queen Eleanor of Provence, who caused all the 
offices to be conferred upon them, and at a real invasion of 
Italian clergy sent by the Pope who monopolized all the 
ecclesiastical benefices. 

First English Parliament (1258). — On the eleventh of June, 
1258, convened the great national council of Oxford, the 
first assembly to which the name of Parliament was officially 
applied. The barons forced the king to intrust the reforms 
to twenty four of their number, only twelve of whom were 
appointed by him. These twenty four delegates published the 
statutes or provisions of Oxford. The king confirmed the 
Great Charter. The twenty four annually nominated the lord 
high chancellor, the lord high treasurer, the judges and other 
public officials and the governors of the castles. Opposition 
to their decisions was declared a capital crime. Finally Par- 
liament was to be convoked every three years. Henry III 
protested and appealed to the arbitration of Saint Louis who 
pronounced in his favor. But the barons did not accept this 
decision. They attacked the king in arms, having as their 
leader a grandson of the conqueror of the Albigenses, Simon 
de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. They took prisoners the mon- 
arch and his son Edward at the battle of Lewes (1264). Then 
Leicester, governing in the name of the king whom he held 
captive, organized the first complete representation of the 
English nation by the ordinance of 1265, which prescribed 
the election to Parliament of two knights for each county 



1327.] FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 263 

and of two citizens or burgesses for each city or borough of 
the said county. 

Edward I (1272). — Under this prince the public liberties 
were respected and the kingdom increased by the acquisi- 
tion of Wales. In Scotland Edward vanquished in succession 
the three champions of the independence of that country : 
John Baliol at Dunbar (1296), William Wallace at Falkirk 
(1298) and Kobert Bruce. But the latter gained the advan- 
tage under the reign of the feeble Edward II (1307) and 
by the great victory of Bannockburn (1314) secured Scottish 
independence. The despicable Edward II was governed by 
favorites whom the great lords expelled or sent to the scaf- 
fold. He himself was put to death by his wife (1327). 

Progress of English Institutions. — These convulsions con- 
solidated institutions which were destined after their com- 
plete development to prevent the recurrence of disorder. 
Let us recapitulate these constitutional steps. In 1215 
Magna Charta, the Great Charter or declaration of the pub- 
lic rights, was promulgated. In 1258 the statutes of Ox- 
ford established regular meetings of the great national 
council, the guardian of the charter of 1215. In 1264 there 
entered Parliament representatives of the petty nobility and 
of the burghers, who were subsequently to form the lower 
chamber or the Commons, while the barons, the immediate 
vassals of the king, were to form the upper chamber or the 
House of Lords. Beginning with 1295 deputies of the 
counties and cities were regularly and constantly elected. 
In 1309 Parliament stipulated conditions to the voting of 
taxes, so that royalty, naturally extravagant, would be kept 
in check and made to respect the laws. Thus in less than 
a century through the union of the nobles and the burgher 
class, England laid those foundations which in modern times 
have so firmly upheld her fortune and guaranteed her tran- 
quillity. 



264 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1328- 



XIV 

FIRST PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 
(1388-1380) 

Causes of the Hundred Years' War. — England and France, 
the latter strong through the progress of the royal power, 
the former through that of public liberty, were engaged in a 
struggle for more than a century. This is the Hundred 
Years' War, which the rashness and incapacity of the French 
nobility rendered so glorious for England. As grandson of 
Philip the Fair, Edward III had claims upon the crown of 
France, for the Salic Law had not as yet acquired the im- 
portance which it assumed later on. But at the accession 
of Philip of Valois he appeared to renounce them. He even 
paid him the feudal homage which was due the king of 
France for the duchy of Guyenne. Nevertheless Edward 
constantly cherished the hope of supplanting him. He was 
encouraged therein by the fugitive Eobert of Artois, de- 
spoiled of the county of Artois, and by the Flemings who, 
being in need of English wool to feed their manufactures, 
rebelled under the leadership of the brewer Jacques Arte- 
veld against their count, the friend of France, and recognized 
Edward as their legitimate king. 

Hostilities in Flanders and Brittany (1337). The only fact 
of importance during the first eight years of war was the 
great naval victory of the English at the battle of the 
Sluice (1340). Fighting was carried on chiefly in Brittany 
where Charles de Blois, head of the French party, disputed 
the ducal crown with Jean de Montfort supported by the 
English. The death of Jacques Arteveld, killed in a pop- 
ular tumult, did not take away the Flemish alliance from 
England, which maintained its superiority in Flanders and 
Brittany. 

Battle of Crecy (1346). In 1346 the fighting became more 
serious. Edward invaded France and penetrated to the 
heart of Normandy, expecting to march upon Paris. The 



1356.] FIRST PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS^ WAR 265 

lack of provisions forced him to turn northward and ap- 
proach Flanders. Philip of Valois although commanding 
60,000 men could not prevent his passage of the Seine 
and Somme, but gave battle near Crecy at the head of 
tired and undisciplined troops. The English army, not 
half so numerous, was well placed upon a height supplied 
with cannon which then for the first time were seen in 
battle, and was covered by a dense line of skilful archers. 
The French chivalry, thrown at random against this strong 
position, were riddled with arrows and strewed the field of 
battle with their dead. Edward though victorious con- 
tinued his retreat upon Calais, which he captured after a 
year's siege, and which the English held for two centuries. 
He obtained at the same time important advantages in Scot- 
land and Brittany. David Bruce was made prisoner at 
Nevil Cross and Charles de Blois at Eoche Derien. 

John the Good (1350). Battle of Poitiers (1356). — At the 
accession of John the Good, France was already in a sad 
state. Calais and a great battle had been lost. Charles the 
Bad, king of Navarre, was intriguing to assert rights to the 
throne which he claimed to inherit from his mother, Jeanne 
d'Evreux. The States General convoked in 1355 raised 
pretensions which recalled and exceeded the Great Charter 
of England. They pretended to collect the public dues 
through their agents, to superintend the expenditures and 
to impose their orders on every one. The nobles refused to 
submit to the impost and formed a plot in which Charles 
the Bad was the leader. John arrested many of the con- 
spirators at a banquet at the very table of his own son 
Charles, and struck off their heads. The English judged 
the occasion fayorable. Edward sent the Duke of Lan- 
caster to Normandy, and the Black Prince to Guyenne. The 
latter advanced toward the Loire. After devastating the 
country he retreated, but found his road cut off by King 
John, who with 50,000 men completely surrounded his 
little army. But skilful measures taken by the prince 
upon the hillock of Maupertuis near Poitiers, and the usual 
rashness of the French nobles gave him a most brilliant 
victory. The king himself was captured. 

French Attempt at Reforms. The Jacquerie. — The great 
disasters of Crecy and Poitiers, caused by the incapacity of 
kings, generals and nobles, brought about a popular commo- 
tion. As the king and the great majority of the lords were 



266 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1356- 

prisoners, the nation took in hand the guidance of public 
affairs. The States General, convened by the Dauphin 
Charles, expressed their will through Etienne Marcel, provost 
of the merchants for the Third Estate, through the Bishop 
of Laon for the clergy, and through the Lord of Vermandois 
for the nobility. Before granting any subsidy, they de- 
manded the removal and trial of the principal officers of 
finance and justice, and the establishment of a council, 
chosen from the three orders, and charged with the direc- 
tion of the government. The States became bolder still. 
They established a commission of thirty-six members to 
superintend everything, and caused the Great Ordinance of 
Reformation to be issued. Thereby they asserted their 
right to levy and expend the taxes, to reform justice and 
control the coinage. Even a mild political reform was 
dangerous in the face of the victorious English. Moreover 
this ordinance, accomplished by a few intelligent deputies, 
was neither the work nor even the desire of Erance. Not a 
single arm outside Paris Avas raised in its support. The 
revolution seemed only a Parisian riot. When the dauphin 
tjied to escape from the obligations imposed upon him, 
Etienne Marcel assassinated his two ministers, the marshals 
of Champagne and Normandy, before his very eyes. Such 
acts of violence discredited the popular movement, which 
was furthermore disgraced by the excesses of the mob or 
the Jacquerie. Finally Marcel, forced to seek other support, 
was on the point of delivering Paris to Charles the Bad, 
when the plot was discovered. He was killed and his party 
fell with him. 

Treaty of Bretig^ny (1360). — The dauphin, being rid of 
Marcel, signed a treaty with Charles the Bad and re- 
mained sole master. With the consent of the States he 
repudiated the disastrous treaty which John, weary of his 
captivity, had just concluded and agreed to that of Bretigny 
which was slightly less onerous. Thereby Edward re- 
nounced his claim to the crown of France, but received thir- 
teen provinces in direct sovereignty. Dying in 1364, John 
ended a reign equally fatal in peace or war. The duchy of 
Burgundy had escheated to the crown, the first ducal house 
having become extinct. Instead of joining it to the national 
domain, John alienated it in favor of his fourth son, Philip 
the Bold. Thus he founded a second ducal house which on 
two occasions came near destroying the kingdom. 



1380.] FIRST PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 267 

Charles V (1364-1380) and Duguesclin.— This Charles the 
Wise rescued France from the abyss of misery. He al- 
lowed the foreign invasion to waste itself in the ravaged 
provinces, and shut up his troops in the strongholds, whence 
they harassed the enemy and rendered it impossible for 
them to obtain fresh supplies. Duguesclin, a petty gentle- 
man of Brittany, whom he had taken into his service and 
whom he afterwards appointed constable of France, by the 
victory of Cocherel (1364) rid him of Charles the Bad. He 
also delivered the country from the " free companies/' lead- 
ing them to the succor of the king of Castile, Henry de 
Transtamara, against his brother, Pedro the Cruel, whom 
the English were supporting and whom he subsequently 
overthrew (1369). 

In 1369 the Gascons, irritated by the extortions of the 
Black Prince, appealed against him to Charles V, the feudal 
suzerain of the duchy of Aquitaine. The king caused the 
Court of Peers to declare this great fief confiscated. This 
was a declaration of war. Charles V was ready, but Edward 
was not. Nevertheless a powerful English army disem- 
barked at Calais. It marched through France as far as 
Bordeaux, but found itself reduced on the way to 6000 
men. When the Prince of Wales died in 1376 and Edward 
III in 1377, almost the entire fruit ot their victories 
was already lost. Bayonne, Bordeaux and Calais alone re- 
mained in the hands of the English. 

Charles was equally skilfid and equally fortunate against 
Charles the Bad, from whom he took Montpellier and 
Evreux. He failed however in the attempt to unite 
Brittany to the royal domain. Influenced by the memories 
of his youth, he avoided assembling the States General. 
Still he strengthened Parliament by permitting it to fill 
vacancies in its own body. He favored letters which had 
Froissart, the inimitable chronicler, as their principal repre- 
sentative. He also began the Koyal Library, which under 
him numbered 900 volumes. He died in 1380. 



268 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1380-1405. 



XV 

SECOND PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 
(1380-1453) 

Charles VI. — Internal troubles almost suspended the 
struggle between France and England for thirty-five years. 
During the minority of Charles VI his uncles wrangled over 
the regency, and the people of Paris beat the tax collectors 
to death. E-ouen, Chalons, Reims, Troyes and Orleans 
joined in a communal movement which started from 
Flanders, but which was put down by the French nobility 
at the bloody battle of Roosebec. The Flemish leader, 
Philip van Arteveld, was there slain. The princes learned 
no lessons from these events. Squandering of the public 
funds and disorders of every sort continued. Suddenly the 
young king lost his reason and was lucid afterwards only at 
rare intervals. His uncle, the Duke of Burgundy, and his 
brother, the Duke of Orleans, disputed the control of 
affairs. The former, surnamed John the Fearless, decided 
the matter by assassinating his rival. 

The Armagnacs and the Burgundians. — The Count of 
Armagnac, father-in-law of the new duke of Orleans, headed 
the faction to which a portion of the nobility adhered and 
which took his name. The Duke of Burgundy was sup- 
ported by the cities. A civil war broke out marked by 
abominable cruelties. John the Fearless flattered Paris 
and specially the mob whose ferocious passions he allowed 
full play. The butcher Caboche deluged the city with the 
blood of the Armagnacs, or of those who were called so. 
The duke encouraged this hideous demagoguery. However, 
the shrewd men of the party and the University devised 
the Cabochian Ordinance for the reform of the kingdom. 
This sagacious code was of brief continuance. Two years 
later the Hundred Years' War began again. 

Wicliffe. — A general effervescence was then agitating 
Western Europe. Everywhere the people were chafing 



SECOND PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 209 

against a social order which overwhelmed them with 
miseries. In the cities the bnrghers, enriched by their 
small beginnings in manufactures and commerce, wished 
to secure their property from the caprice and violence of 
the great. Some even laid presumptuous hands on the 
things of the Church. 

In 1366 Pope Urban V demanded from England 33,000 
marks, arrears of the tribute which John Lackland had 
promised to the Holy See. Parliament refused payment; 
and a monk, John Wicliffe, took advantage of the popular 
indignation to attack in the name of apostolic equality the 
whole hierarchy of the Church. In the name of the Gospel 
he also assailed such dogmas, sacraments and rites as were 
not found expressly stated in the New Testament. His 
translation of the Bible into English rapidly disseminated 
those ideas which Lollard, burned at Cologne in 1322, had 
already taught. 

One of Wicliffe's partisans even drew political conse- 
quences from his doctrine. John Ball went about through 
the cities and towns, saying to the poor : — 

" When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Where was then the gentleman ? " 

Dangerous thoughts were fermenting everywhere. They 
existed in the minds of those who, about this same time, 
were exciting the riots of Rouen, Reims, Chalons, Troyes and 
Paris and the insurrection of the White Caps in Flanders. 
Thus premonitory signs always herald great storms. The 
unthinking protests of the fourteenth century against 
mediaeval double feudalism, the secular and the religious, 
announced the deliberate revolt of Luther and Calvin in 
the sixteenth in the realm of faith, of Descartes in the 
seventeenth in philosophy, and of the whole world in the 
eighteenth in politics. 

Richard II (1380). — One year after the accession of 
Richard II, son of the Black Prince, 60,000 men marched 
to the gates of London, demanding the abolition of serfdom, 
the liberty to buy and sell in the markets and fairs and, 
what was more unreasonable, the reduction of rents to a 
uniform standard. They were put off with fair promises. 
After they had dispersed, 1500 of them were hanged and 
everything went on as before. 

The young king had three ambitious and greedy uncles. 



270 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1397-1422. 

They stirred up opposition to him. He rid himself of the 
most turbulent, the Duke of Gloucester, by assassination. 
Many nobles were slain or exiled, and England bowed her 
head in terror. Henry of Lancaster, a descendant of a third 
son of Edward III, and then in exile, organized a vast con- 
spiracy. Richard was deserted by all and deposed by Par- 
liament " for having violated the laws and privileges of the 
nation." So, thus early, England through her Parliament 
had already succeeded in forming a x^eople and in resuming 
the ancient idea of national rights superior to dynastic 
rights. The next year Richard was assassinated in prison. 

Henry IV. Battle of Agincourt (1415). Treaty of Troyes 
(1420). — Henry IV devoted his reign of fourteen years to 
settling the crown securely in his house. On his death-bed 
he advised his son to recommence the war against France, 
so as to occupy the turbulent barons. In 1415 Henry V 
renewed at Agincourt the laurels of Crecy and Poitiers. 
This defeat, again due to the rashness of the nobility, over- 
turned the Armagnac government. The Burgundians re- 
entered Paris, which they again deluged with blood. After 
the English archers and men-at-arms had safely placed their 
booty on the other side of the Strait, they returned to the 
quarry, pillaging Normandy systematically and capturing 
its cities one after the other. In 1419 Rouen fell into their 
hands. The assassination of John the Fearless at the bridge 
of Montereau also served their interests. This murder, 
authorized by the dauphin, threw the new duke of Bur- 
gundy, Philip the Good, into the English party. Henry V, 
once master of Paris and of the person of Charles VI, caused 
himself by the treaty of Troyes to be acknowledged as heir 
to the king, the daughter of whom he married. This lady 
was to avenge France by transmitting to the son whom she 
bore to Henry V the imbecility of his French grandfather. 

Charles VII and Joan of Arc. — Henry and Charles both 
died in 1422. They were succeeded by two kings in France, 
the English infant Henry VI at Paris, and the Valois 
Charles VII south of the Loire. 

The little court of the latter, whom the English derisively 
called king of Bourges, cared only for pleasure and gayety. 
The constable of Richemont sought in vain to rouse the 
king from his unworthy occupations. Meanwhile petty de- 
feats chased his armies from Burgundy and Normandy. 
Bedford, the English regent, managed affairs skilfully and 



SECOND PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS^ WAR 271 

in 1428 laid siege to Orleans the key of the south. The 
disgraceful battle of the Herrings completed the discourage- 
ment of the French party, and Charles VII was contem- 
plating retreat to the extreme south when Joan of Arc made 
her appearance. 

This peasant girl, born at Domremy on the frontier of 
Lorraine, presented herself at court, claiming that it was 
her mission to deliver Orleans and crown the king. Her 
virtues, her enthusiasm and her conviction inspired confi- 
dence. The most valiant captains threw themselves into 
Orleans, following in her train. Ten days later the English 
after several defeats evacuated their camp. Next she won 
the battle of Patay, where the English commander Talbot 
was captured, and conducted the king to Reims, where 
he was crowned. Believing her wonderful mission accom- 
plished, she wished to return home but was dissuaded. In 
May, 1430, while defending Compiegne, she fell into the 
hands of the Burgundians, who sold their prisoner to the 
English for 10,000 francs. Tried and condemned for witch- 
craft, she was burned alive at Rouen on May 30, 1431. 

Success and Reforms of Charles VII. — This crime marked 
the close of English good fortune. Affected by French 
reverses, the Duke of Burgundy remembered that he was a 
Frenchman and abandoned the English. His defection was 
profitable for himself, as he obtained several cities and coun- 
ties, as well as exemption from all homage. Thus he became 
king in fact in his fiefs. In the following year Paris opened 
her gates to Charles VII. Transformed by his many mis- 
fortunes and ably supported by the Chancellor Juvenal, the 
silversmith Jacques Coeur, the artilleryman Bureau, and 
the soldiers Dunois, Lahire and Xaintrailles, he triumphed 
everywhere. In 1444 the English, through the influence 
of the Cardinal of Winchester who headed the peace party, 
concluded a truce of two years with France, and sealed it 
by the marriage of Henry VI with Margaret of Anjou. At 
the same time Charles VII put down a rebellion of the 
nobles, who were alarmed at the progress of his authority, 
and had the Bastard of Bourbon tied up in a sack and 
thrown into the water. By the creation of a permanent 
army, he dealt a death-blow at feudal power. This army 
comprised fifteen companies of 100 lances each and of 
free archers. The States of Orleans suggested the idea 
and voted a perpetual tax of 10,200,000 francs for the pur- 



272 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1450-1453. 

pose. In consequence of this strictly national force, Charles 
was no longer dependent on the mercenaries and highway- 
men who devastated, rather than defended, France. 

Soon he found himself strong enough to finish with the 
English. By the battle of Formigny (1450) he drove 
them from Normandy, and by that of Castillon (1453) from 
Guyenne. They retained only Calais. So ended the Hun- 
dred Years' War, which had heaped so many calamities upon 
France. It had strengthened public liberty in England and 
enforced the dependence upon Parliament of victorious kings 
who needed money and men for their expeditions. While 
it continued, the two peoples advanced farther in the differ- 
ent paths which we have seen them enter. Amid the ruins 
of France royalty was finding absolute power. Despite 
their triumphs of Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, the Eng- 
lish kings learned submission to Parliament and the law. 




Copyright. 1898. by T. Y. Crowell St. Co 



Eflgfaied by Colton. Oilman & Co.. N. Y. 



A.D. 1250-1300.] SPAm AND ITALY FROM 1250-1453 273 



XVI 

SPAIN AND ITALY FROM 1250 T.O 1453 

Intermission of the Spanish Crusade. Domestic Troubles. 

— The Moors were now crowded upon the Alpuj arras as the 
Christians had formerly been upon the Pyrenees. Instead 
of continuing the struggle and driving them into the sea, the 
Spanish kings forgot the conflict which had made their fort- 
une, and yielded to the temptation of meddling in Euro- 
pean affairs. 

Navarre, which had been unable to increase its territory 
in the religious wars, looked northward toward France, and 
gave itself to the Capetians when its heiress married Philip 
the Fair. 

Alphonso X, king of Castile, wished to be emperor of 
Germany. While he wasted his money in this vain candi- 
dacy, the rival houses of Castro, Lara and Haro kept the 
kingdom in turmoil and even sought aid from the Moors. 
Threatened with insurrection, the king himself solicited the 
support of the African Merinides. The nation deposed 
him and put in his place his second son, Don Sancho, a 
brave soldier (1282). Nevertheless Alphonso X was sur- 
named the Wise. He knew astronomj^, and published a 
code wherein he tried to introduce the right of representa- 
tion, prevalent in the feudal system, but not in Spain. 

Sancho availed himself of the ancient law and claimed 
the succession in preference to his nephews, sons of his 
deceased elder brother. Therefrom troubles ensued with 
the king of France, uncle of the dispossessed young princes. 
The stormy minorities of Ferdinand IV and Alphonso XI 
saw disorders again in Castile. The latter prince, however, 
rendered himself illustrious by the great victory of Eio 
Salado over the Merinide invasion and by the capture of 
Algiers. After him Pedro the Cruel and his brother, 
Henry II of Transtamara, disputed the throne. By the aid 
of Duguesclin Transtamara succeeded, after he had himself 
stabbed his brother in his tent. Henry III vainly tried to 



274 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1410. 

repress the Castilian nobility, who under John II and 
Henry IV tyrannized over the country and court. Eoyalty 
became independent only about the close of the fifteenth 
century under Isabella and Ferdinand the Catholic, as we 
shall see later on. 

While the energies of Castile were dissipated in civil 
dissensions, Aragon acquired Roussillon, Cerdagne and the 
lordship of Montpellier, and interfered in the affairs of the 
Albigenses. It also gained Sicily after the Sicilian Ves- 
pers, which it retained despite the stipulations of the treaty 
of Anagni, and added Sardinia to its dominions. In 1410 
the glorious house of Barcelona became extinct. Its various 
crowns passed to a prince of Castile, who left two sons : 
Alphonso V, who became king of the Two Sicilies through 
his adoption by Joanna of Naples ; and John II, who for a 
time united Navarre and Aragon by poisoning his son-in- 
law, Don Carlos of Viana. To Ferdinand, the successor of 
this monster, it was reserved to accomplish the unity and 
grandeur of Spain by his marriage with Isabella of Castile. 

The feudal system never was really established in Castile. 
Amid the risks of a desperate struggle against the Moors, 
the nobles and cities, fighting separately, acquired inde- 
pendence and fortified themselves in their castles or behind 
their walls. Many of these cities obtained fueros, or 
charters of liberty, and the king merely placed an officer or 
regidor in them for general supervision. But three distinct 
classes existed in Castile : the ricos hombres or great 
landed proprietors ; the caballeros or hidalgos, or petty 
nobles, exempt from imposts on condition of serving on 
horseback ; the pecheros or taxpayers who formed the 
burgher class. As every one had fought in the Holy War, 
there were no serfs as in feudal countries and the gulf be- 
tween the classes was less profound than elsewhere. Be- 
ginning with 1169 the deputies of the cities were admitted 
to the Cortes, the national parliament. 

Aragon had more of the feudal system, perhaps because 
of the former Carlovingian domination in the Marches of 
Barcelona. The ricos hombres received baronies, which 
they divided up and sub-enfeoffed. Next were the mes- 
naderos or lesser vassals, the infanzones or plain gentlemen, 
and the commoners. These four orders were represented 
in the Cortes. But Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia had 
their separate cortes. The royal authority was greatly 



A.D. 1385-1434.] SPAIN AND ITALY FROM -1250-1453 21 o 

hampered by the jurisdiction of the justiza or grand justi- 
ciary. 

Portugal at the extremity of Europe opened out new 
ways for herself. John I, head of the house of Avis 
which succeeded the extinct house of Burgundy, maintained 
the independence of Portugal against the pretensions of 
Castile by the victory of Aljubarotta (1385). He then 
turned the attention of his people toward Africa and in 
1415 conquered Ceuta. This expedition taught his youngest 
son, Henry, that Portugal, shut off from the land by Castile, 
had no future except toward the sea. He established him- 
self in the village of Sagres on Cape Vincent, summoned 
mariners and geographers, founded there a naval academy, 
and at last launched his navigators upon the ocean. In 
1417 they discovered Porto Santo, one of the Madeira Is- 
lands, where the prince planted vines from Cyprus and 
sugar-canes from Sicily. Pope Martin V granted him 
sovereignty over all the lands which should be discovered 
from the Canary Isles as far as the Indies, with plenary 
indulgence for whoever should lose their lives in these 
expeditions. Zeal redoubled. In 1434 Cape Bojador was 
passed, then Cape Blancho and Cape Verde. The Azores 
were discovered. They were on the road to the Cape of 
Good Hope, which the Portuguese Vasco de Gama was to 
sail round half a century later. 

The Kingdom of Naples under Charles of Anjou (1265). — 
In the strife for universal dominion which the chiefs of 
Christendom, the Pope and the Emperor, had waged, Italy, 
the theatre and the victim of the struggle, could not attain 
independence. When the empire and the papacy declined, 
she seemed at last about to control her own destiny. Such 
however was not the case. Her old habits continued of 
intestine discords and of mixing strangers with her quarrels. 
She repeated the spectacle once presented by the turbulent 
cities of ancient Greece. She was covered with republics, 
waging incessant war with each other, and yet she shone 
with a vivid glow of civilization that was the first revival 
of letters and arts. 

The death of Frederick II (1250) marked the end of the 
German domination in Italy. But he left a son at Naples, 
Manfred, who, strong by his talents, his alliance with the 
podestats of Lombardy and the aid of the Saracens of 
Lucera at first braved the ill-will of the Pope. Alexander 



276 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1265-1310. 

IV had, it is true, been driven from Rome by Brancaleone, 
who had restored momentarily the Roman republic. 

Urban IV, resolved to extirpate "the race of vipers," 
had recourse to foreign aid. He bestowed the crown of 
Naples upon Charles of Anjou, the brother of Saint Louis, 
on condition of his doing homage to the Holy See, paying 
an annual tribute of 8000 ounces of gold and ceding Bene- 
ventum. In addition to this Charles swore never to join 
to this kingdom the imperial crown, Lombardy or Tuscany 
(1265). The excommunicated Manfred was vanquished and 
slain, and the Pope's legate caused his body to be thrown 
into the Garigliano. Conradin, a grandson of Frederick 
II, came from Germany to claim his paternal inheritance. 
Beaten and captured at Tagliacozzo, he was beheaded by 
order of Charles of Anjou, together with his friend Fred- 
erick of Austria. With him the glorious house of Suabia 
became extinct. 

The conqueror strengthened his power in the kingdom of 
Naples by executions. Despite his promises he ruled over 
most of Italy under the various titles of imperial vicar, 
senator of Rome and pacificator. He dreamed of a fortune 
still more vast and meditated restoring for his own benefit 
the Latin empire of Constantinople, which had recently 
fallen. After being diverted for a time from this project by 
the Tunisian crusade (1270) and by the opposition of Greg- 
ory X and Nicholas III, he was at last about to put it into 
execution when the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers (1282) 
gave Sicily to Peter III, king of Aragon, one of the accom- 
plices in the great conspiracy of which the physician Pro- 
cida was the head. Then began the punishment of this 
ambitious and pitiless man. Admiral Roger de Loria 
burned his fleet. His son Charles the Lame was captured 
in another naval battle, and the king of France, his ally, 
was repulsed from Aragon. The treaty of 1288 secured 
Sicily to a son of the Aragonese. In 1310 Pope Clement 

V compensated the house of Anjou by placing one of its 
members upon the throne of Hungary. 

Italian Republics. Guelphs and Ghibellines. — During 
this conflict in the south the little states of the north, 
freed from both the German and the Sicilian domination, 
were engaged in continual revolutions. The government 
passed in Lombardy into tyrannies ; in Tuscany into democ- 
racies ; in Venetia into aristocracies ; in Romagna into all 



A.D. 1297-1348.] SPAIN AND ITALY FROM 1250-1453 277 

these various systems. In 1297 Venice declared that only 
the noble families of councillors then in office were eligible 
for the Great Council. This measure was shortly afterward 
crowned by the completion of the Golden Book, or register 
of Venetian nobility, and the establishment of the Council 
of Ten. In 1282 Florence raised the Minor Arts, or infe- 
rior trades, almost to the level of the Major Arts b}^ setting 
up an executive council composed of the chiefs of all the 
Arts. This was to the disadvantage of the nobles, who 
could be admitted to public eiMployments only on renounc- 
ing their rank. A little later the population was divided 
into twenty companies, under a like number of gonfaloniers 
or standard-bearers commanded by one supreme gonfalonier. 
The majority of the Tuscan cities adopted this organization 
with little change. So, too, did Genoa. But this was not a 
source of harmony. Genoa, which disputed Pisa's rights 
to Corsica and Sardinia, destroyed the military force of the 
Pisans in the decisive battle of Melloria (1284). The un- 
happy defeated city was at once attacked by all Tuscany. 
It resisted for a while and intrusted all power to the too 
famous Ugolino. When he had perished together with his 
four children in the Hunger Tower, prostrate Pisa was able 
to exist only by renouncing every ambition. Florence then 
controlled all Tuscany, but she turned her arms against her 
own breast. Under the name of Ghibellines and Guelphs 
her factions carried on a relentless war. Dante 1:he great 
Florentine poet, the father of the Italian language, in exile 
lamented these dissensions and sought everywhere for some 
power capable of restoring peace to Italy. He found it 
neither in the papacy, then captive at Avignon, nor in the 
emperor to whom Italy was simply a source of profit. 
Henry VII, Louis of Bavaria, John of Bohemia, extorted 
what they could from the unhappy land. 

The tribune Rienzi, filled with classic memories which 
were then reviving, tried to restore liberty to Eome (1347) 
and to render her the protectress of Italian independence. 
He set up a so-called Good State, but this merely ephemeral 
enthusiasm was powerless to overcome local passions, or the 
terror caused by the horrible black pest or the Plague of 
Florence which Boccaccio has described in his Decameron 
(1348). At the instigation of the papal legate he was 
massacred by that very populace of Eome by whom he had 
been so often applauded. 



278 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1378-1453. 

Return of the Papacy to Rome (1378) . The Principalities. — 

The revolution of 1347 warned the papacy of the discontent 
caused by its absence. It finally returned to Eome in 1378. 
Stripped of the power and prestige which it had formerly 
possessed, it was incapable of giving rest to revolutionary 
Italy. In Florence there were constant troubles between 
the Major Arts or upper class, led by the Albizzi, and the 
Minor Arts, led by the Medici. Hostile to both were the 
ciompi or petty tradesmen. The latter put Michael Lendo, 
a wool-carder, at their head, who seized the power but was 
unable to retain it. The commercial rivals, Venice and 
Genoa, were waging against each other the so-called war 
of Chiozza, which Venice, at first besieged in her own lagoons, 
finally terminated by the destruction of the Genoese marine. 
She also subdued Padua and Vincenza, but did not ruin them 
as Florence had done to Pisa, destroying it from top to 
bottom. 

In Lombardy skilful leaders took advantage of civil dis- 
cords and converted the republics into principalities. Thus 
did Matteo Visconti at Milan, Cane della Scala at Verona 
and Castruccio Castracani at Lucca. In 1396 Gian Galeozzo 
Visconti bought from the Emperor Wenceslas the titles of 
duke of Milan and count of Pavia, with supreme authority 
over twenty-six Lombard cities. The condottieri, or merce- 
naries, another scourge of Italy, handed over everything to 
the first adventurer who was able to lead or pay them. A 
former peasant, Sforza Attendolo, became a mercenary, 
entered the service of Philip Marie Visconti, married his 
daughter and at his death seized the duchy of Milan (1450). 
Northern Italy was falling under the sword of a mercenary. 
Florence bowed her head beneath the yardstick of an opulent 
merchant, Cosmo de Medicis, who supplanted the Albizzi. 
With the support of that same Sforza, whose banker he was, 
he established in his city an analogous system, though less 
despotic and more brilliant than that of Milan. The cry 
for liberty which the Roman Porcaro lifted in the peninsula 
in 1453 found no echo. 

The Aragonese at Naples. — As far as the welfare of Italy 
was concerned, there was nothing to hope for from the Nea- 
politan kingdom, itself a prey to endless wars of pretenders. 
Against the guilty Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Urban VI 
summoned Charles of Durazzo, the son of the king of Hungary, 
and offered him the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Joanna 



A.D. 1381-1442.] SPAIN AND ITALY FROM 1250-1453 279 

recognized as lier successor Duke Louis of the second house 
of Anjou. Charles, victorious in 1381, smothered Joanna 
under a mattress. For a time he exercised an important 
influence over Italy. But when he died in Hungary, the 
Kingdom of Naples relapsed into anarchy, fought over by 
the princes of Anjou, Hungary and Aragon. Alphonso V of 
Aragon, who was adopted by Joanna II, finally prevailed 
(1442). 

Brilliancy of Letters and Arts. — Despite her wretched 
political condition, Italy shone in her letters, arts, manu- 
factures and commerce. Her language, already formed at 
the court of Frederick II, became fixed under the pen of 
Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. She welcomed the Greek 
fugitives. Her learned men, Petrarch, Chrysoloras, Braccio- 
lini and Leonardo Bruni, gave the signal for the search after 
manuscripts and the revival of ancient letters. Nicholas Y 
founded the Vatican library ; Cosmo de Medicis founded tlie 
Medicean library, and had Plato commentated by Marcilio 
Ficino. Venice had her church of Saint Mark (1071) ; Pisa 
her famous cathedral (1063), her Baptistery (1152), her lean- 
ing tower (1174), her gallery of the Campo Santo (1278) ; 
Florence, her churches of Santa Croce, of Santa Maria Del 
Fiore, and that wonderful cathedral of i3runelleschi, opposite 
which Michael Angelo wished to be buried. Cimabue, Giotto, 
and Masaccio were creating painting. 

At the end of the thirteenth century Venice had 35,000 
sailors and monopolized the commerce of Egypt, while 
Genoa controlled that of Asia Minor, the Dardanelles 
and the Black Sea. Milan was a great industrial city in 
the middle of a rich country. Florence manufactured 
80,000 pieces of cloth a year, and Verona one-fourth as 
many. Canals fertilized Lombardy. Banks put money 
in circulation. No other European state was so advanced 
in civilization, but no country was so divided. Conse- 
quently it possessed much wealth to excite the greed of 
foreigners, but not a citizen or a soldier to defend it. 



280 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1250-1278. 



XVII 

GERMANY. THE SCANDINAVIAN, SLAVIC AND TURKISH 

STATES 

(1350-1453) 

The Interregnum. The House of Hapsburg (1272). — In- 
stead of employing its forces to organize Germany, the 
imperial authority had worn itself out in Italy. After the 
death of Frederick II, the former country endured twenty- 
three years of anarchy (1250-1273). This is called the 
Great Interregnum. The throne, disdained by the German 
princes and sought by such foreign or feeble competitors as 
William of Holland, Richard of Cornwall and Alphonso X of 
Castile, was practically vacant. While the supreme author- 
ity was thus eclipsed, the kings of Denmark, Poland, and 
Hungary and the vassals of the kingdom of Burgundy, 
shook off the yoke of imperial suzerainty. The petty nobil- 
ity and the cities ceased payment of their dues. The lords 
built donjons which became lairs of bandits. To protect 
their possessions against violence, the lesser lords formed 
confederations and so did the cities. About the same time 
the Hanseatic League came into existence. This confedera- 
tion had Liibeck, Cologne, Brunswick and Dantzic as its 
headquarters, and its chief counting houses were London, 
Bruges, Berghen and Novgorod. In the country districts 
many serfs acquired liberty or sought an asylum in the 
suburbs of the cities. 

The great interregnum ceased with the election of Ru- 
dolph of Hapsburg, an impoverished lord who did not seem 
formidable to the electors (1273). Abandoning Italy 
which he called the lion's den, he centred his attention upon 
Germany. He defeated and slew on the Marchfeld (1278) 
Ottocar II, King of Bohemia, who refused him homage. 
He annulled many grants made by successors of Frederick 
II, forbade private wars, made the states of Franconia, 
Suabia, Bavaria and Alsace take an oath to keep the public 



A.D. 1308-1414.] GERMANY 281 

peace of the empire. He founded the power of his house 
by investing his sons, Albert and Rudolph, with the duchies 
of Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. 

Switzerland (1315). — The Hapsburgs had lands in Swit- 
zerland, and their bailiffs were hard upon the mountaineers. 
In 1307 the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden united 
to end this oppression. To this period attaches the heroic 
legend of William Tell. Albert was assassinated by his 
nephew at the passage of the Ileuss when about to give 
the confederates battle. Leopold, Duke of Austria, lost the 
fight at Morgarten (1315), where the Swiss laid the founda- 
tions of their independence and of their military renown. 
The three original cantons were joined by Lucerne, Zurich, 
Glaris, Zug and Berne (1332-1353). The victories of Sem- 
pach (1386) and of Nsefels (1388) consolidated Helvetian 
liberty. 

Powerlessness of the Emperors. — The German princes who 
now disposed of the crown desired to give it only to penni- 
less nobles, so that the emperor should not be able to call 
them to account. For this reason they elected Henry VII 
of Luxemburg (1308). Louis IV of Bavaria belonged to a 
stronger house but, excommunicated by Pope John XXII 
and threatened by the then all powerful king of France, 
he was on the point of resigning a title which brought him 
only annoyance. Then the princes, ashamed of the situa- 
tion forced upon the man of their choice, drew up the Prag- 
matic Sanction of Frankfort, which declared that the Pope 
had no rights whatever over the empire or over the em- 
peror. The reign of Charles IV (1346-1378) is remarkable 
only for the greed of that needy prince, who made money 
out of everything, " plucking and peddling out the imperial 
eagle like a huckster at a fair." Nevertheless Germany 
owes him the Golden Bull, which determined the imperial 
elective system. It named seven Electors, three of them 
ecclesiastics, the archbishops of Mayence, Cologne and 
Treves, and four laymen, the king of Bohemia, the Count 
Palatine, the Duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Branden- 
burg (1356). 

Wenceslas disgraced the imperial throne by ignoble vices, 
and was deposed in 1400. Under Sigismund the Council 
of Constance assembled and the Hussite War broke out. 
The council was convened in 1414 to reform the Church 
and to terminate the schism which had arisen from the 



282 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1414-1444. 

simultaneous election of two popes, one at Rome and the 
other at Avignon. It barely attained the second object 
and failed in the first. It sent to the stake John Huss, 
rector of the University of Prague. He had attacked the 
ecclesiastical hierarchy, auricular confession and the use of 
images in worship. His followers, called the Hussites, 
revolted under the leadership of a blind general, John 
Zisca. All Bohemia was aflame and for fifteen years peo- 
ple religiously cut one another's throats ! 

At the death of Sigismund (1438) the Hapsburgs again 
ascended the imperial throne, which they occupied until 
1806. Albert II died in 1439 while fighting the Ottoman 
Turks, and his posthumous son Ladislas inherited only 
Bohemia and Hungary. But Frederick, another Austrian 
prince of the Styrian branch, succeeded to the empire 
(1452). He was the last emperor who went to Rome for 
coronation. However the resonant title did not confer 
even the shadow of power. The head of the empire had 
as emperor neither revenues nor domains nor military 
forces nor judicial authority, except in rare cases. His 
right to veto the decisions of the Diet was generally a 
mockery. The Diet, divided into the three colleges of the 
electors, the princes and the cities, was the real govern- 
ment of Germany. Still it governed as little as possible, 
and did in reality govern very little the seven or eight hun- 
dred states of which the empire was composed. 

Hungary, then the bulwark of Europe against the Otto- 
man Turks, was attached to the German political system. 
Under the reign of Sigismund it had been united for a 
brief period to Austria, but became separated therefrom 
under Ladislaus, king of Poland, who was defeated and 
slain by the Ottomans at Varna (1444). John Hunyadi, 
voevode of Transylvania and regent of the kingdom, for 
a long time held the Mussulmans in check. 

Union of Calmar (1397). — Scandinavia comprised the 
three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. These 
countries, whence the pagan Northmen had set out, were 
converted in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Denmark 
was powerful under Canute the Great, who reigned also 
over England, and under the two brothers, Canute VI and 
Waldemar the Victorious (1182-1241) who conquered Hol- 
stein and Nordalbingia. Waldemar had large revenues, a 
fine navy and a numerous army. He published the Code 



A.D. 1254-1466.] GERMANY 283 

of Scania. Danish students went^ in quest of learning to 
the University of Paris. Later on Sweden in turn became 
powerful under the dynasty of the Folkungs, who founded 
Stockholm (1254). Norway suffered from long continued 
disturbances, due to the elective character of its monarchy 
which became hereditary only in 1263. 

In 1397 under Margaret the Great, daughter of the 
Danish Waldemar III, it was stipulated by the Union of 
Calmar that the three northern kingdoms should form a 
permanent union, each retaining its own legislation, consti- 
tution and senate. This union, the condition of their 
greatness and security, unhappily did not last. After the 
death of the " Semiramis of the North" (1412), it was 
weakened by the rebellion of Schleswig and Holstein and 
was broken in 1448 by Sweden, which then gave itself a 
king of its own. Denmark and Norway remained united. 

Power of Poland. — The Slavic states between the Bal- 
tic and the Black Sea furnish very little to history before 
the ninth century. The Poles on the banks of the Vistula 
and Oder had as their first duke Piast, the founder of a 
dynasty which reigned for a time under the suzerainty of 
the German empire. Boreslav I the Brave (922) declared 
himself independent and assumed the title of king. Boles- 
lav III the Victorious (1102-1138) subdued the Pomera- 
nians. But after him Silesia withdrew. The Knights of 
the Teutonic Order were called to succor Poland against 
the Borussi or Prussians, an idolatrous tribe which sacri- 
ficed human beings. They established a new state between 
the Vistula and the Niemen, which became a dangerous 
enemy. Poland was compelled to cede to it Pomerelia 
and Dantzic. She indemnified herself under Casimir the 
Great by the conquest of Eed Russia, Volhynia and Podolia 
and extended her frontiers as far as the Dnieper (1333- 
1370). Yet under this sagacious prince the pacta conventa 
took its rise. This was a system of capitulations imposed 
by the nobility on new kings, and destined to become a 
source of that anarchy which finally delivered Poland to 
her enemies. The election to the throne of Jagellon, Grand 
Duke of Lithuania, in 1386, rendered Poland the dominant 
state of Eastern Europe. From the Knights of the Teutonic 
Order he seized many provinces, and by the Treaty of Thorn 
their dominions were reduced to eastern Prussia (1466). 

The Mongols in Russia. — Russia, which absorbed a 



284 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1223-1395. 

great part of Poland later on, had as yet done little. We 
have seen how the l^orthmen pirates led by Rurik entered 
the service of the powerful city of Novgorod, which they 
eventually occupied as masters (^^2). Gradually spreading 
out, they descended the Dnieper, to seek at Constantinople 
lucrative service or adventure. In the eleventh century 
the grand principality of Kief was already a respectable 
power. In the twelfth the supremacy passed to the grand 
principality of Vladimir. In the following century Russia 
was invaded by the Mongols of Genghis Khan, who in 1223 
fought a battle in which six Russian princes perished. 
Baty captured Moscow in 1237 and advanced as far as 
Novgorod. The grand principality of Kief ceased to 
exist; that of Vladimir paid tribute. Poland, Silesia, 
Moravia and Hungary were conquered or devastated. 
Even the Danube was crossed and for a time all Europe 
trembled. The Mongols halted at last before the mountains 
of Bohemia and Austria, but Russia remained under their 
yoke for two centuries. 

The Ottoman Turks at Constantinople (1453). — Toward 
the same period a less noisy but more tenacious invasion 
was taking place south of the Black Sea. Descending from 
the Altai or " Golden Mountains," the Turks had invaded 
India, Persia, Syria and Asia Minor. Othman, the chief of 
one of their smaller tribes, obtained possession of Brousa in 
1325, and his son Orkhan gained Nicomedia, Nicaea and Gal- 
lipoli on the European side of the Dardanelles. Mourad I, 
endowed the Ottomans with a terrible army by developing 
the corps of the janissaries. This soldiery was composed of 
captive Christian youth, who were reared in the Mussulman 
religion. Special tracts of land were assigned them. En- 
forced celibacy and life in common gave them some re- 
semblance to a military order. Before directly attacking 
Constantinople, the sultans outflanked it. Mourad I took 
Adrianople and attacked the valiant peoples of Bulgaria, 
Servia, Bosnia and Albania. Victor at Cossova, he fell by 
assassination on the field of battle (1389). His successor, 
Bayezid I, reaped the fruits of his victory. Macedonia and 
Bulgaria submitted and Wallachia acknowledged itself 
tributary. 

On the banks of the Danube Bayezid I encountered a Eu- 
ropean crusade, commanded by Sigismuncl. Many French 
knights, and among them John the Fearless, took part. 



A.D. 13t»6-1453.] GERMANY 285 

Those brilliant nobles ruined their cause by their obstinate 
rashness at the fatal battle of Nicopolis (1396). More effi- 
cacious aid reached the Greeks from an unexpected quarter. 
Tamerlane had restored the empire of Genghis Khan, and 
ruled from the Ganges to the Don. Assailing the growing 
Ottoman power, he overthrew and captured Bayezid I at the 
great battle of Angora (1402). The rapid disappearance 
of the Mongols enabled the Ottomans to recover. In 1422 
Mourad II laid siege to Constantinople but in vain. He 
failed also in Albania against Scanderbeg, but won the bat- 
tle of Varna, where Ladislaus, king of Poland and Hungary, 
was slain (1444). Fortunately the Hungarians and Hun- 
yadi, though sometimes defeated but always in arms, through 
their repeated efforts checked the conquerors. Moreover the 
Ottomans could not hurl their whole strength upon West- 
ern Europe so long as Constantinople resisted them. Mo- 
hammed II resolved to free himself from this determined 
enemy. He besieged the imperial city with an army of over 
200,000 men, an immense artillery and an enormous fleet. 
His ships he transported overland into the harbor across 
the isthmus which separates the Golden Horn from the Bos- 
phorus. The Emperor Constantine XIII maintained a he- 
roic though hopeless resistance for fifty-seven days. A 
final assault, on May 29, 1453, accomplished the fall of the 
Eastern heir of the Eoman Empire. 



286 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 



XVIII 

SUMMARY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 

If now we sum up this history, apparently so confused, 
we perceive that the ten centuries of the Middle Ages natu- 
rally divide into three sections. 

From the fifth to the tenth century the Roman Empire 
crumbles away. The two invasions from the north and the 
south are accomplished. The new German Empire which 
Charlemagne attempts to organize is dissolved. We behold 
everywhere the destruction of the past and the transition 
to a new social and intellectual condition. 

From the tenth to the fourteenth century feudalism has 
its rise. The crusades take place. The Pope and the Em- 
peror contend for the world. The burgher class is reconsti- 
tuted. This is the mediaeval period, simple in its general 
outlines, which reaches its fullest flowering in the time of 
Saint Louis of Erance, with customs, institutions, arts and 
even a literature peculiar to itself. 

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this feudal so- 
ciety descends into an abyss of miser}^ The decay seems 
that of approaching death. But death is the condition of 
life. If the Middle Ages vanish, it is to make way for 
Modern Times. A little charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur 
will restore equality on the battlefield, a prophecy of ap- 
proaching social equality, either under royal omnipotence 
or under the protection of public liberties. Hence power 
changes its place. No longer the monopoly of the man of 
arms or of the noble, it passes first to the kings as later on 
it will pass to the people. Thought becomes secularized 
and quits the cloister. The genius of ancient civilization 
is about to spring forth. Already artists and writers are 
on the road of the Renaissance, as the Portuguese are on 
that of the Cape of Good Hope. Audacious voices are 
heard arguing about obedience and even about faith. The 
Middle Ages have indeed come to an end since things are 
becoming: new. 



SU^fMARY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 287 

But did the Middle Ages wholly die ? They bequeathed 
to Modern Times virile maxims of public and individual 
rights, which then profited only the lords, but which now 
profit all. The Middle Ages developed chivalrous ideas, a 
sentiment of honor, a respect for woman, which still stamp 
with a peculiar seal those who preserve and practise them. 
Lastly, mediaeval architecture remains the most imposing ma- 
terial manifestation of the religious sentiment, an architect- 
ure we can only copy when we wish to erect the fittest 
houses of prayer. 




Copyright. 1888, by T. Y. Cruwell & Co. 



Engr.iveJ by Cultun. Ul.mau i Cq., N. Y. 



HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES 



PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN PRANCE 

Principal Divisions of Modern History. — The Middle 
Ages have been characterized by the predominance of local 
powers like fiefs and communes, and by the small consider- 
ation paid the state. Modern Times until the nineteenth 
century are characterized by the preponderance of a central 
power or absolute royalty, and by governmental action sub- 
stituted for that of individuals and communities. But 
while the political life of the nations was becoming con- 
centrated in their chiefs, the intellect by an opposite ten- 
dency was bursting its bonds and diffusing itself over 
everything to renew all. 

The political revolution will result in the Italian wars 
and the rivalry through centuries of the houses of France 
and Austria. 

The intellectual movement will cause: a pacific revolu- 
tion in art, science and letters, or the Eenaissance; an 
economical revolution, or the discovery of the New World 
and of the route to India, thereby creating a prodigious 
commerce which will place personal property in the hands 
of the common people ; a religious revolution, or the Refor- 
mation of Luther and Calvin, against which fanaticism will 
excite abominable wars; a philosophic revolution, brought 
about by Bacon and Descartes and continued in the eigh- 
teenth century. The latter will result in a new j^olitical 
and social revolution whose success unhappily will be com- 
promised by blind resistance and criminal violence. 

This in its general features is the history of the centuries 
which compose the period from 1453 to 1848, called Modern 
u 289 



290 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1465-1468. 

Times. First, then, we have to show liow the political in- 
stitutions of the Middle Ages gave way in the principal 
states of Europe to a new system of government. 

Louis XI (1461-1483). The League of Public Welfare 
(1465). — Charles VII had reconquered France from the 
English. He had also to reconquer it from the nobles. 
The work was already begun. More than one rebellious 
noble had been drowned or beheaded or banished. The 
dauphin himself, the son of Charles, who afterwards be- 
came Louis XI, had entered into every plot against his 
father and had been forced to demand a refuge with the 
Duke of Burgundy. He was with him when Charles VII 
died (1461). When this former leader of discontent 
ascended the throne, it was thought that the good old 
days of feudalism were returning. Such expectation was 
quickly undeceived. At first Louis bungled. He dismissed 
most of the officers whom his father had appointed, in- 
creased the perpetual villein tax from 1,800,000 livres to 
3,000,000, and notified the University of Paris of the papal 
prohibition to interfere in the affairs of the king and the 
city. By other acts he offended the parliaments of Paris 
and Toulouse. He incensed the ecclesiastics and the nobil- 
ity, and rendered the great dukes of Brittany and Burgundy 
his enemies. Five hundred princes and nobles formed the 
League of Public Welfare against him. 

The danger was great. Louis, met it with little heroism 
but with much cleverness. After a show of military ac- 
tivity he shut himself behind the walls of his capital and 
labored to dissolve the League by offering pensions and 
lands to those greedy nobles. By a variety of public 
and private arrangements he promised them each what- 
ever each one desired. As for the public welfare, no one 
spoke or thought of that. 

Interview of Peronne (1468). — After the confederates 
were satisfied and all had returned home, he began syste- 
matically to retract everything he had granted. To the 
Duke of Berri he had ceded Normandy, which it was most 
important to the king to retain. Inciting insurrections in 
several Burgundian towns, he thus occupied Charles the 
Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and at the same time purchased 
the neutrality of the Duke of Brittany by the present of 
100,000 crowns. Then he entered Normandy and made 
himself its master. Meanwhile by seasonable gifts or bribes 



A.D. 1468-1472.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN FRANCE 291 

of money or office he shrewdly attached to himself some of 
the most influential persons in France. 

Charles the Bold tried to revive the whole feudal system 
and to make an pJliance with Edward IV, king of England. 
As an English army was preparing to disembark in France, 
Louis went to the court of Charles to negotiate in person 
and avert the danger. At that moment a rebellion, which 
he had previously incited and which he had forgotten to 
countermand, broke out at Liege. Charles, profoundly 
incensed, imprisoned his guest in the castle of Peronne. 
Louis obtained his freedom only by hard concessions and 
by marching with the duke against Liege. That unhappy 
city, whose inhabitants fought to the cry of " Long live 
the king," was given over to sack (1468). 

The treaty of Peronne was the last mistake of Louis XL 
To his one rival, the Duke of Burgundy, it was the begin- 
ning of impossible dreams and enterprises. Louis sent his 
brother, the Duke of Berri, to the other end of France by 
giving him Guyenne instead of Champagne. He shut up 
the cardinal La Balue and the bishop of Verdun for ten 
years in an iron cage because they had betrayed him. The 
king of England, allied to the Duke of Burgundy, had a 
mortal enemy in the Earl of Warwick. Louis reconciled 
the latter to Margaret of Anjou and furnished him the 
means of overthrowdng Edward IV and restoring Henry VI. 
Now sure of having isolated Charles the Bold, he convoked 
at Tours an assembly of notables. He caused this assembly 
to repudiate the treaty of Peronne. Forthwith he seized 
Saint Quentin, Montdidier, Amiens and other towns. He 
set on foot 100,000 men and a powerful artillery (1471). 

Death of the Duke of Guyenne (1472). — The rage of 
Charles was raised to frenzy by the death of the Duke of 
Guyenne or Berri. upon whom rested the hopes of feudalism 
(1472). Rumors of poison circulated. Charles the Bold 
openly accused Louis XI of fratricide, and entered the king- 
dom dealing everywhere fire and blood. At Nesle the 
entire population was butchered. The inhabitants of Beau- 
vais resisted with a heroism of which the women and espe- 
cially Jeanne Hachette set the example. Charles was forced 
to retrace his steps. Moreover ambition called him in 
another direction. He signed the truce of Senlis. 

Mad Enterprises and Death of Charles the Bold (1477). — 
The chief attention of the Duke of Burgundy was now di- 



292 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1472-1478. 

rected toward Germany, Lorraine and • Switzerland. He 
wished to unite his two duchies and his possessions in the 
Netherlands by the acquisition of the intermediate countries, 
Lorraine and Alsace. That done, he aimed at conquering 
Provence and Switzerland and restoring old Lotharingia 
under the name of Belgian Gaul. He already held Upper 
Alsace and the county of Ferrette, which the Austrian Arch- 
duke Sigismund had pawned to him for money, and he was 
soliciting from the Emperor Frederick III the title of king. 
Louis XI, by his activity and his money caused the ship- 
Avreck of these ambitious plans. The archduke suddenly 
paid the duke the 80,000 florins agreed upon as the ransom of 
Alsace. Hagenbach, the agent of Charles in that coun- 
try, was seized and beheaded by the inhabitants of Brisach 
(1474). Lastly the Swiss, whom he had molested, entered 
Franche-Comte and gained over the Burgundians the battle 
of Hericourt. While these events were taking place in the 
south, Charles himself in the north was meeting failure in 
his attempt to support the archbishop of Cologne against 
the Pope and the Emperor. Edward IV, who had landed 
in France at his invitation, concluded the treaty of Pec- 
quigny with Louis XI, who loaded him with money and 
sent him back to his island. 

That he might be free to finish his affairs with Lorraine 
and Switzerland, the duke signed with the king of France 
a new treaty at Soleure. A few days later he entered Nancy 
and conquered Lorraine, The Swiss remained to be dealt 
with. He made a foolish attack and was completely routed at 
Granson (1476). Three months later he was again defeated 
at Morat. Then Lorraine rose in favor of Kene de Vaude- 
mont, and Charles went to his death in battle under the 
walls of Nancy (1477). 

TJnion of the Great Fiefs with the Crown. — While the 
mightiest feudal house of France was thus crumbling to 
ruin on the plains of Lorraine, Louis XI was destroying the 
others. Many lords were guilty either of plots against the 
king or of monstrous crimes. Jean V of Armagnac had 
married his sister and slew whoever opposed him. Besieged 
and captured in Lectoure, he and his wife were put to death. 
The Duke of Nemours was beheaded in the market-place. 
The Duke of AleuQon was imprisoned and the constable of 
Saint Pol also executed. Louis confiscated not only their 
heads, but their property. 



A.D. 1478-1483.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN FRANCE 293 

As to the immense possessions left by Charles the Bold, 
he could obtain only a portion. His disloyal policy forced 
Mary, the heiress of Burgundy, to marry the Archduke 
Maximilian. From this marriage, unfortunate for France, 
arose the enormous power of Charles V, which caused the 
houses of France and Austria long and bloody struggles. 
Nevertheless Louis succeeded in incorporating Picardy and 
part of Burgundy into the royal domain. He even com- 
pelled the conditional cession of Franche-Comte. During 
the preceding year he acquired all the inheritance of the 
house of Anjou. Thus when he died in 1483 he had res- 
cued from feudalism and added to France, Provence, Maine, 
Anjou, Koussillon and Cerdagne, Burgundy Avith the Ma- 
Qonnais, Charolais, and Auxerrois, Franche-Comte, Artois, 
half of Picardy, Boulogne, Armagnac, Etampes, Saint Pol 
and Nemours. 

Administration of Louis XI. — He rendered tenure of 
office permanent, established posts, created the parliaments 
of Grenoble, Bordeaux and Dijon, enlarged opportunity of 
appeal to the royal tribunal, assured the public tranquillity 
and the safety of the highways, multiplied fairs and mar- 
kets, and attracted from Venice, Genoa and Florence arti- 
sans who founded at Tours the first manufactures of silk. 
He encouraged mining industry and entertained the idea 
of giving France a common system of weights and measures. 
He delighted in learned men, founded the Universities of 
Caen and Besanqon and favored the introduction of printing. 
"Everything considered, he was a king." Villon and his 
councillor Commines are the poet and the prose writer of 
his reign. 

Charles VIII (1483). — Charles VIII succeeded, a child 
of thirteen, feeble in mind and body. His guardian was 
his eldest sister, Anne of Beaujeu, in shrewdness and deci- 
sion the worthy daughter of her father. A violent reaction 
against the late policy made many victims, but the nobles 
could not overthrow the work of Louis XL They demanded 
and obtained the convocation of the States General, but their 
expectations were disappointed. The deputies, especially 
those of the Third Estate, would not make themselves the 
tools of feudal grudges. They reformed some abuses, but 
left entire power to Anne of Beaujeu, together with guar- 
dianship of the king's person, whom they declared of age. 
This princess continued her father's policy without his cru- 



294 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1488-1498. 

elty. The Duke of Orleans entered into an alliance with, 
the Duke of Brittany and the Archduke Maximilian to 
overthrow her. He was defeated and captured in what is 
called the Mad War, The regent won another triumph as 
to the succession in Brittany. That great fief was almost 
as formidable as Burgundy. She married its heiress to 
Charles VIII, and thus paved the way for its union with 
France. Unfortunately the king broke away from his sis- 
ter's guardianship in ambition for distant expeditions. 
Eager to put his dreams into execution, he signed three 
deplorable treaties. By that of Staples he continued to 
Henry VII the pension which his father had paid to Ed- 
ward IV. By that of Barcelona, he restored Roussillon and 
Cerdagne to the king of Aragon. Lastly by that of Sen- 
lis, still more disastrous, he enabled Maximilian to gain 
Artois and Franche-Comte. Thus through the folly of her 
sovereign France receded on three frontiers. It required 
nearly two centuries and the astuteness of Richelieu and 
Louis XIV to regain what Charles VIII threw away in 
pursuit of a dangerous chimera. 



1400.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN ENGLAND 295 



II 

PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN ENGLAND. WAR OF THE 
ROSES 

Houses of Lancaster and York. — England had outstripped 
Europe in her political institutions. Parliament and the 
jury system gave the English control of the taxes and trial 
by their peers, the double guarantee of j)olitical and civil 
liberty. The nobles, united with the commoners, did not 
allow the kings to abandon themselves to their caprices. 
Then came a civil war of thirty years' duration, which over- 
rode all these pledges of prosperity and opened to royalty 
the path of absolutism. This was the War of the Roses, 
originating in the rivalry of the house of Lancaster, or Red 
Rose, and the house of York, or White Rose. 

The house of Lancaster, seated on the throne by the 
accession of Henry IV, had given England the glorious 
Henry V and his successor, the feeble and imbecile Henry 
VI. Under the latter France was lost, and the national 
pride of the English was greatly wounded by their reverses. 
They beheld with indignation the truce of 1444, and were 
incensed at the marriage of the king with Margaret of 
Anjou, who as a French princess became the object of their 
aversion. Richard, Duke of York, thought the moment 
propitious to assert his claims to the throne. The house of 
Lancaster descended from the third son of Edward III. 
The house of York was in the female line descended from 
the second son, and in the male line from the fourth son. 
Richard caused the Duke of Suffolk, the king's favorite 
minister, to be attainted by the House of Commons. The 
court enabled the accused to escape, but he was overtaken 
on the high seas by an English vessel, whose crew seized, 
condemned and beheaded him (1450). 

At the same time an Irishman, Jack Cade, stirred up the 
county of Kent to rebellion. He got together a crowd of 
60,000 men, and was master of London for several days. 
The robberies committed by this mob armed every one 



296 HISTOEY OF MODERN- TIMES [a.d. 1459-1470. 

against tliem, and an amnesty offered by the king brought 
about their dispersion. Their leader was captured and 
executed (1459). He was regarded as an agent of the Duke 
of York. 

As the king suffered from a mental trouble, Richard 
caused hiuiself to be appointed protector (1454). When the 
monarch on restoration to health tried to take away his 
powers, he took up arms. He was abetted by the high aris- 
tocracy, especially by Warwick, surnamed the king-maker, 
who was rich enough to feed daily 30,000 persons on his 
estates. Victorious at Saint Albans (1455), the first battle 
in that war, and master of the king's person, Eichard had 
Parliament again confer on him the title of protector. After 
a second battle at Northampton (1460), he was declared 
legitimate heir to the throne. Margaret protested in the 
name of her son. Aided by the support of Scotland which 
she purchased by the cession of Berwick castle, she defeated 
and slew Richard at Wakefield. The head of the rebel 
was adorned in derision with a paper crown, and exposed on 
the walls of York. His youngest son, the Earl of Rutland, 
aged barely eighteen, was butchered in cold blood. From 
that time on the massacre of prisoners, the proscription of 
the vanquished and the confiscation of their goods became 
the rule with both parties. 

Edward IV (1460). — Richard of York was avenged by 
his eldest son, who had himself proclaimed king in London 
under the name of Edward IV. The Lancastrians gained 
the second battle of Saint Albans, but suffered that same 
year (1461) a sanguinary defeat at Towton, southwest of 
York. Margaret took refuge in Scotland, and fled thence 
to France where Louis lent her 2000 soldiers on her promise 
to restore Calais, but the battle of Hexham destroyed her 
hopes (1463). She herself was able to regain the continent, 
but Henry V, a prisoner for the third time, was confined in 
the Tower of London, where he remained seven years. 

The new king displeased Warwick, who rebelled, defeated 
him at Nottingham (1470), and forced him to flee to the 
Netherlands to his brother-in-law, Charles of Burgundy. 
Parliament, docile to the will of the strongest, reestablished 
Henry VI. 

This triumph of the Lancastrians was brief. Their 
excesses roused bitter discontent. Edward was able to 
reappear with a small army, which Charles the Bold had 



A.D. 1471-150G.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY AV ENGLAND 297 

helped him get together. Warwick fell at Barnet (1471) 
and Margaret was no more fortunate at Tewksbury. This 
last action had decisive results. The Prince of Wales 
murdered, Henry VI dead, Margaret a prisoner, the parti- 
sans of the Eed Rose killed or exiled, Edward IV remained 
in peaceable possession of the throne. The rest of his reign 
was marked by an expedition to France, terminated by the 
treaty of Pecquigny, and by the trial of his brother Clar- 
ence, whom he put to death. He died in consequence of his 
debauches in 1483. 

Richard III (1483). — His brother Eichard of York, 
Duke of Gloucester, took advantage of the youth of 
Edward's children to usurp their rights, and smother them 
in the Tower of London. Horror of his crimes divided his 
followers. The Duke of Buckingham revolted and invited 
to England Henry Tudor, Earl of Eichmond, the last scion 
on the female side of the Lancastrian house. Henry hired 
2,000 men in Brittany, landed in Wales and at Bosworth 
overthrcAv Eichard, who fell fighting bravely (1485). 

Henry VII. — He united the two Eoses by wedding the 
heiress of York, the daughter of Edward IV. He founded 
the Tudor dynasty, which reigned until the accession of 
the Stuarts, 118 years afterward. Though a few plots 
were formed by such obscure impostors as Lambert Simnel 
and Perkin Warbeck, he ruled as absolute master over the 
remnants of the decimated aristocracy. Eighty persons of 
royal blood had perished. Nearly one-fifth of the lands of 
the kingdom through confiscation had become part of the 
domains of the crown. Thus when the War of the Eoses 
ended English royalty found increased resources at its dis- 
posal and fewer enemies to fear. 

Henry VII rarely assembled Parliament. The money 
which he would not ask for fear of making himself depend- 
ent, he procured by forced loans or benevolences, and by 
confiscations, which he multiplied on every sort of pretext. 
The Star Chamber became a servile tribunal to strike down 
those whom a jury would not have permitted him to reach. 
The ruin of the aristocracy was completed by the abolition 
of the rights of maintenance, whereby the nobles had been 
able to rally round them a whole army of followers, and of 
substitution, whereby the nobles had been prevented from 
alienating or dividing their lands. By the treaties which 
he concluded, by the voyages which he caused to be under- 



298 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1506. 

taken and by his attention to the shipping, he favored com- 
merce and industry, to which the nation devoted itself with 
zeal. He paved the way for the union of Scotland and 
England by marrying his daughter Margaret to James IV. 
He died in 1506. Perfidious, rapacious and cruel, without 
grandeur of mind or action to redeem his vices, he founded 
like Louis XI in France and Ferdinand the Catholic in 
Spain an absolute government, which in England became 
truly great only under Elizabeth. 



A.D. UG9.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IX SPAIX 299 



III 

PROGRESS OP ROYALTY IN SPAIN 

Abandonment of the Crusade against the Moors. — The 

Spanish people had thus far remained almost entirely aloof 
from European affairs. They had been obliged to wrest 
their soil foot by foot from the Moors. That task, the first 
condition of their national existence, was not yet finished. 
The southern extremity of the peninsula still belonged to 
the Mussulmans and formed the kingdom of Granada, the 
last of the nine states into which the caliphate of Cordova 
had been broken. Thus Spain had lived a life apart 
throughout the Middle Ages. She had been engrossed in 
the single undertaking of expelling the Moors, odious both 
as Mussulmans and as foreigners. This isolation and this 
perpetual crusade gave her a peculiar character. Nowhere 
else has religion exercised such ascendency over the mind. 
It was the sole bond which united the various states of the 
peninsula. 

We have seen however that, forgetting the Moors, the 
four Christian states had diverted their attention and their 
forces in different directions : Portugal toward the ocean, 
Aragon toward Sicily and Italy, Navarre toward France, 
while Castile was rent by internal discords. Everywhere 
royalty was in a humiliating position. A spirit of indepen- 
dence reigned in the cities which had their fueros, and 
among the nobles who defended their privileges of war and 
brigandage. But the need of uniting for mutual protection 
against violence made itself felt as early as 1260 in the cities 
of Aragon, and afterward in those of Castile. The Santa 
Hermandad or Holy Brotherhood, a confederation of the 
principal cities, was instituted. This organization became 
so prosperous that it furnished the king at the siege of 
Granada 8000 armed men and 6000 beasts of burden. 

Marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of Castile 
(1469). — In Aragon John II poisoned his son Charles, 
Prince of Viana, who disputed his claim to the kingdom of 



300 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d, 1461-1499. 

Navarre (1461). The Catalans, rising in revolt, gave them- 
selves in succession to the king of Castile, to Pedro of 
Portugal and to the house of Anjou. They submitted only- 
after eleven years of war. 

In Castile Henry IV rendered himself odious and des- 
picable by his predilection for Bertrand de la Cueva, a 
greedy and cowardly favorite who disgraced him. The 
nobles went through the form of deposing the king in effigy 
in the plain of Avila, and in his place proclaimed Don Al- 
phonso, who died in 1467. Then they forced Henry IV to 
recognize as princess of the Asturias his sister Isabella, to 
the prejudice of his own daughter (1468). Prom many 
suitors to her hand Isabella chose Perdinand, the eldest son 
of the king of Aragon, and married him secretly at Valla- 
dolid (1469). It was stipulated in the contract that the 
government of Castile should remain vested exclusively in 
her. She took possession at the death of her father (1474) 
and strengthened her authority by defeating the king of 
Portugal, who undertook to dispute her rights. Three years 
afterward Perdinand, her husband, became king of Aragon 
(1479). 

Conquest of Granada (1492). — Prom that day Spain ex- 
isted. The firm Isabella and the clever though perfidious 
Perdinand toiled vigorously to establish national unity for 
the benefit of royalty. Pirst of all, they rendered the whole 
peninsula Christian by destroying the last remnants of Mus- 
sulman domination. G-ranada had more than 200,000 in- 
habitants. The Moors were promised after the capture of 
their city (1492) that they should be allowed to remain in 
the country and enjoy their own laws, property and religion. 

The Inquisition. The Power of Royalty. — The popula- 
tion of the peninsula then presented a singular mixture of 
Mussulmans, Jews and Christians. Isabella and Perdinand 
decided to bring dissenters to a common religious faith by 
persuasion, and above all by terror. With this intent they 
had already instituted that tribunal of melancholy fame, the 
Holy Office or Inquisition. It was established in Castile 
about 1480, and in Aragon four years later. Between 
January and November, 1481, in Seville alone the inquisi- 
tors sent to torture 298 Christian proselytes, accused of 
Judaizing in secret, and 2000 in the provinces of Cadiz and 
Seville. In 1492 they expelled the Jews of whom 800,000 
departed from Spain. In 1499 they deprived the Moors of 



A.D. 1499-1521.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN SPAIN 301 

the religious liberty wliicli the treaty of Granada had guar- 
anteed. Torquemada, the first grand inquisitor, alone con- 
demned 8800 persons to the flames. 

The king controlled the terrible tribunal, for he appointed 
its chief and the property of the condemned was confiscated 
to his use. Thus the Inquisition was for Spanish royalty 
not only a means of ruling the conscience but an instrument 
of government. Any rebellious or suspicious person could 
be denounced to the Holy Office. This was a mighty engine. 
Ferdinand acquired another together with considerable 
revenues by making himself grand master of the orders 
of Calatrava, Alcantara and Saint James. He reorganized 
the Holy Brotherhood, announced himself its protector, that 
is to say its master, and employed it for the police service 
of the country at the expense of the barons, whose castles 
he razed to the ground. In a single year forty-six fortresses 
were demolished in Galicia. Commissioners were sent into 
all the provinces, who listened to the complaints of the peo- 
ple and made the nobles tremble. 

At the death of Isabella (1504) Ferdinand became regent 
of Castile. As king of Aragon, he acquired the Two Sicilies. 
The acquisition of Navarre put him in possession of one of 
the two gates of the Pyrenees. The other, Koussillon, had 
been ceded to him by Charles VIII (1493). Already Chris- 
topher Columbus had given America to the crown of Castile 
(1492). This immense heritage reverted on his death in 
1516 to his grandson Charles, already master of Austria, 
the Netherlands and Franche-Comte, whose history we shall 
trace farther on. 

In the absence of the new king. Cardinal Ximenes exer- 
cised the power with an energy which forced obedience from 
the nobles. The communeros, taking alarm too late at the 
menacing progress of royalty, formed a Holy League, which 
committed the mistake of demanding the abolition of the 
pecuniary immunities of the nobility. The aristocracy sepa- 
rated its cause from that of the cities and rallied around the 
sovereign. The army of the League was routed at Yillalar 
and its leader, Don Juan de Padilla, died on the scaffold 
(1521). Thus Spanish royalty triumphed over the burgher 
class as it had triumphed over the nobles, but the nation 
was about to lose its wealth, its vigor and its honor for the 
sake of serving the ambition of its masters. 

Progress of Royalty in Portugal. — In Portugal the same 



302 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1481-1515. 

revolution was accom23lished. John II restored alienated 
property to the royal domain, withdrew from the lords the 
right of life and death over their vassals, sent the Duke of 
Braganza to the scaffold and stabbed the Duke of Viseu with 
his own hand. He transmitted absolute power to his son 
Manuel the Fortunate (1495), who during twenty years did 
not assemble the Cortes. Under the latter prince the Por- 
tuguese discovered the road to the Cape of Good Hope and 
the Indies. 

Thus throughout all Western Europe royalty became pre- 
dominant. This condition indicated the approach of great 
wars. Because the countries of Central Europe remaiued 
divided, they were to become the battlefield of royal am- 
bitions. 



A.i>. li38-14<Ju.] GERMANY AND ITALY FROM 145 J-1404 o03 



IV 

GERMANY AND ITALY FROM 1453 TO 1494 

Frederick III (1440) and Maximilian (1493). — In Ger- 
many the house of Austria had just recovered possession 
of the imperial crown (1438), to which hardly a shadow 
of authority was attached. Frederick III was not a man 
to modify this state of affairs, but was content with bare 
existence. His reign of fifty-three years is marked only 
by an unfortunate war against Matthias Corvinus, king of 
Hungary, and by the marriage of his son Maximilian to 
Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold and heir- 
ess of the Netherlands. 

Maximilian endeavored to restore the public peace in 
Germany. The Diet, which exercised legislative power, 
prohibited all war between the states. The empire was 
divided into ten circles, in each of which a military director 
was charged with maintaining order. This police organiza- 
tion did not succeed, because the German princes had no 
idea of being checked in their enterprises. They had seized 
upon the absolute poAver in their lands, as the kings had 
done in their kingdoms. The monarchical revolution accom- 
plished in France, England and Spain had also taken place 
in the empire, but not to the profit of the emperor. In 
1502 the seven electors concluded the Electoral Union and 
decided to convene every year for the purpose of consulta- 
tion as to the best means of preserving their independence 
from imperial authority. With another object in view sev- 
eral of the cities had already set up the Hanseatic League. 
This was the mercantile association of all the cities along 
the banks of the Rhine and the German coast. It had 
counting houses in the Netherlands, France, England and 
even in the heart of Eussia, and was prosperous for cen- 
turies. 

As archduke of Austria and sovereign of the Nether- 
lands, Maximilian acquired by the treaty of Senlis (1493) 
Artois and Franche-Comte. Then in an erratic manner he 



304 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1453-1480. 

meddled in Italy. The most important event in his reign 
was the marriage of his son Philip the Fair with Jane the 
Foolish, daughter of Isabella of Castile and of Ferdinand of 
Aragon, who brought to the house of Austria as her dowry- 
Spain, Naples and the New World. Maximilian died (1519) 
during the first throes of the Reformation. 

Italy. Republics Replaced by Principalities. — In the 
middle of the twelfth century Italy was the centre of 
Mediterranean commerce. She had a skilful agricultural 
system and well developed manufactures. She Avas rich, 
luxurious and corrupt, with a passion for arts and letters 
but no taste for arms. More divided than Germany, she 
had not even a nominal head like the emperor, nor a body 
like the Diet which could sometimes speak in her name. 
Almost universally the republics had been changed into 
principalities, whose princes reigned as tyrants or magnifi- 
cent despots. The capture of Constantinople by the Otto- 
mans caused a momentary panic, and the different states of 
Italy formed a confederation at Lodi (1454). Men talked of 
a crusade. Pius II wished " the bell of the Turks " to be 
rung every morning throughout Christendom. But when 
the first moment of fright was over, each one went back to 
his own private interests. 

At Milan the condottiere Francesco Sforza, who had suc- 
ceeded the Visconti in 1450, left the ducal crown to his son, 
who was assassinated by the nobles (1476). His grandson 
Giovanni Galeazzo, a child of eight years, fell under the 
tutelage of his uncle Ludovico il Moro, who for the sake 
of usurping the power was destined to call in the French 
and begin the fatal Italian wars. Genoa incessantly dis- 
turbed by factions offered itself to Louis XI, who had the 
wisdom to refuse the fatal gift and transfer it to the Duke 
of Milan. The Lombards, as the inhabitants of that rich 
duchy were called, continued to be the bankers of Europe, 
and their agents were found everywhere in the commercial 
world. 

Venice remained the chief power in northern Italy. No 
republic could more fully resemble a monarchy. After 1454 
its exclusive oligarchy was governed by three state inquisi- 
tors, who watched each other and made their own laws. 
The state existed tranquilly in the lap of pleasure under 
this strong but pitiless government, Avhose principal instru- 
ments of action were spies and secret accusation. Provedi- 



A.D. 14G0-U92.] GERMANY AND ITALY FROM 1453-1494 305 

tors kept watch of the generals, who were carefully chosen 
from among the foreign mercenaries or condottieri, so that 
she might have nothing to fear from them at home. On 
the continent she had just subjugated four provinces, while 
the Turks were ruining her domination in the East. She 
lost Negropont and Scutari and beheld their swift horse- 
men threaten her lagoons. In order to save their commerce 
the Venetians consented to pay tribute to the new masters 
of Constantinople. When they were taunted with this dis- 
grace, they replied, " We are Venetians first of all, Chris- 
tians afterward." In Italy the Avealth of the " Most Serene 
Republic" excited the covetousness of the neighboring 
princes, while her recent acquisitions endangered their se- 
curity. In 1482 they formed a league against her, but she 
triumphed over the excommunications of the Pope and over 
the arms of his allies. 

At Florence the Medici had supplanted the Albizzi by 
relying on the Minor Arts, or the middle class. They were 
rich bankers with many debtors in the city whom they held 
attached to their fortune. Cosmo de Medici, the head of 
this house, was master of Florence until 1464 though he 
bore no title. He caused commerce, manufactures, arts and 
letters to thrive, and expended more than $6,000,000 in 
building palaces, hospitals and libraries, though continuing 
to live like a private citizen. He was surnamed the "Father 
of the Country." Liberty no longer existed. The nobles 
tried to restore it by the conspiracy of the Pazzi (1478), and 
assassinated Guiliano de Medici at the foot of the altar. 
Lorenzo, his brother who escaped the dagger, punished the 
murderers. One of the conspirators, Archbishop Salviati, 
was hanged in his episcopal robes from a window of his 
palace. Lorenzo, the most illustrious of the Medici, wel- 
comed the Greek fugitives from Constantinople. He had 
a translation of Plato made, an edition of Homer published, 
and encouraged artists and learned men. Ghiberti cast for 
him the doors of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, which 
Michael Angelo deemed " worthy to be the gates of Para- 
dise." In 1490, ruined by his magnificence, he was about 
to suspend payment. To save him the republic became 
bankrupt herself. 

Under Pietro II, his unworthy successor, a new popular 
party, the frateschi, demanded public liberty. Its leader, 
the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola, wished to restore 



306 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1494. 

to the clergy purity of manners, to the people their ancient 
institutions, and to letters and the arts the religious senti- 
ment which they had already lost. Beholding the opposi- 
tion of the young nobles and of the wealthy classes to every 
reform, he declared that all those gilded vices were about to be 
chastised by a foreign hand. " Italy ! Rome ! Do pen- 
ance, for lo, the barbarians are coming like hungry lions ! " 

The papacy was unable to avert these disasters, because 
the Holy See was occupied by i)opes who disgraced the 
tiara. Thus Sixtus IV busied himself in carving a princi- 
pality in the Romagna for his nephew, and to attain success 
had taken part in the conspiracy of the Pazzi. Alexan- 
der VI Borgia is the scandal and the sorrow of the Churcl^ 
His election had been defiled by simony. His pontificate 
was polluted by debauchery, perfidy and cruelty. He indeed 
delivered the Holy See from the many turbulent petty lords 
who infested the neighborhood of Rome, but his weapons for 
their overthrow were ruse, treason and assassination. His 
son, Caesar Borgia, is an infamous example of a man de- 
voured with ambition and destitute of scruples, marching 
to his goal by any road. To create for himself a state in 
the Romagna, he waged against the lords of that country 
the same sort of war that his father had carried on against 
those of the papal states. No crime troubled him, whether 
by dagger or poison. More than any other man he con- 
tributed to earn for Italy the surname which was then 
applied to her of the " Poisonous." 

At Naples Ferdinand in 1459 had succeeded Alphonso the 
Magnanimous. He triumphed at Troia over John of Cala- 
bria, his Angevine rival, but he seemed desirous of bringing 
about a new revolution by reviving hatreds instead of effac- 
ing them. The harshness of his rule stirred up his barons 
against him. He deceived them by promises, invited them 
to a banquet of reconciliation, then had them seized at his 
very table and put to death. The common people fared no 
better. Ferdinand claimed the monopoly of all the com- 
merce of the kingdom and crushed the people with taxes. 
He did not prevent the Ottomans from seizing Otranto and 
the Venetians from taking Gallipoli and Policastro. The 
profound contempt which he excited explains how subse- 
quently Charles VIII could drive him from his kingdom 
of Naples without breaking a lance. All the Italian states 
from one end of the peninsula to the other were in the same 
condition. 



A.D. 1453.] THE OTTOMAN TURKS 307 



THE OTTOMAN TURKS 
(1453-1530) 

Powerful Military Organization of the Ottomans. Mo- 
hammed II. — The Ottomans were apparently the foe whom 
Italy had most to dread. By the conquest of Constantinople 
they had definitely established themselves in the great 
peninsula which separates the Adriatic and Black Seas. 
Mohammed II was obeyed from Belgrade on the Danube 
to the Taurus in Asia Minor. But this mighty empire had 
two classes of enemies. On the west were the various 
Christian nations, and on the East the Persian schismatics. 
These two parties by taking turns at fighting the Ottomans 
w^ere to keep them within bounds. The one checked their 
progress on the Tigris, and the other along the lower valley 
of the Danube. 

The Ottoman government was like that of all Asiatic 
peoples despotism tempered by insurrection and assassi- 
nation. Nevertheless above the Sultan or Padishah was 
the Koran, whose interpreters, the Sheik ul Islam and the 
Oulenia, often won the ear of the ruler or of the people. 
The Turkish armies were then stronger than those of the 
Christians. Their most effective force consisted of 40,000 
janissaries, a regular and permanent troop. The Christians 
had as yet hardly more than the feudal militia. Moreover 
the sultan could quickly raise 100,000 men from the tima- 
riots, or lands given for life on condition of military service. 
They thoroughly understood the art of fortification and pos- 
sessed an unequalled artillery. These efiicient means of 
action were put in play for two centuries by ten successive 
and energetic princes. Above all account must be taken of 
the religious fanaticism and martial ardor of a race which 
also saw its victories fruitful in acquisition of lands and 
wealth. It is not difiicult to explain the rapid progress of 
the Ottomans. 



308 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1453-1512. 

After making Constantinople his capital, Mohammed II 
undertook the subjugation of Hungary and Austria. But 
he was hurled back in 1456 by Hunyadi from the walls of 
Belgrade. He then attacked the remnants of the Greek 
Empire and seized Athens, Lesbos, the Morea and Trebizond. 
Christendom ought to have united in one common effort. 
Pope Pius II demanded it. But the sovereigns were busy 
about other things. Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, 
who was most endangered, and Frederick III, emperor of 
Germany, were warring against each other. Corvinus did 
at least force the Turks to a halt on the Danube. But the 
Albanian Scanderbeg, Prince of Epirus, was their one per- 
sistent enemy. During twenty-three years he fought them 
without repose and gained more than twenty battles. His 
death in 1468 and the fall of Croia, his capital, delivered 
Albania into their hands. Two years afterward they 
wrested Negropont from the Venetians. Also they 
triumphed over the Tartar Ouzoun Hassan, who had just 
founded in Persia the dynasty of the White Sheep, and was 
stirred up against them by Pope Paul II. 

Fortunately the Moldavians on the lower Danube, the 
Albanians and some Greek mountaineers compelled Moham- 
med II to divide his forces. Although he had sworn to feed 
his horse with oats on the altar of Saint Peter's in Rome, 
he could undertake no serious enterprise against Italy. The 
surprise of Otranto by his fleet was hardly more than a 
bold and sudden raid by sea (1480). When his horsemen 
came and burned villages within sight of Venice, that 
republic took alarm. She sued for peace, ceded Scutari on 
the coast of the Adriatic and promised an annual tribute. 
Mohammed II was heading a great expedition, the object of 
which Avas known only to himself, when death overtook him 
in 1481 at the age of fifty -three. 

Bayezid II (1481) and Selim I the Ferocious (1512). — His 
son, Bayezid II, was a scholar rather than a soldier. More- 
over he was forced to consult prudence, inasmuch as his 
brother Zizim after an unsuccessful rebellion had escaped 
as a fugitive to the Knights of Rhodes. By them he had 
been delivered into the hands of Pope Alexander VI. As 
long as Zizim was with the Christians, he was a constant 
menace to his brother. Yet despite his pacific inclination, 
it was necessary to keep the janissaries busy and somehow 
win their favor. So Bayezid sent them to conquer Bosnia, 



A.D. 1512-1520.] THE OTTOMAN TURKS 309 

Croatia and Moldavia on the left bank of the Danube where 
the Ottomans already possessed AVallacliia. The soldiers be- 
came discontented with their indolent sultan and placed his 
son Selini on the throne. At once the movement of conquest 
resumed its course. The new monarch attacked Persia, 
beginning the religious war by the massacre of 40,000 
Shiite Mussulmans who inhabited his states. A bloody 
battle near Tauris was indecisive, but he soon subjugated 
the provinces of Diarbekir, Ourfa and Mossoul, which ex- 
tended the Turkish Empire as far as the Tigris (1518). 
Syria belonged to the Mamelukes of Egypt. Selim attacked 
them. He defeated them at Aleppo, at Gaza and finally on 
the banks of the Nile, where the Copts and fellahs, down- 
trodden by the Mamelukes, welcomed him as a liberator. 
Moutawakkel, caliph of Cairo, confided to him the Standard 
of the Prophet and resigned the religious authority into his 
hands. The Arab tribes in their turn submitted. The 
scherif of Mecca came to offer the conqueror the keys of the 
Kaaba. Thus the sultan became the Commander of the 
Faithful, the spiritual as well as the temporal chief of 
the Mussulmans. 

By this conquest the road to the East by way of Egypt was 
closed to Europeans. This was the death-blow of Venice. 
Master of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, Selini also 
held in its western basin the strong fortress of Algiers, 
which the pirate Horouk, surnamed Barbarossa, had wrested 
from Spain and placed under his protection in return for 
the title of Bey (1518). From that time until 1830 Algiers 
was a nest of pirates who preyed upon European commerce. 
Abominable cruelties accompanied the conquests of Selim 
and earned for him the surname of the Ferocious. He died 
in 1520 and had for his successor Souleiman the Magnificent, 
the worthy rival of his illustrious contemporaries Charles V 
and Francis I. 



310 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1494 



VI 

WARS IN ITALY. CHARLES VIII AND LOUIS XII 

Consequences of the Political Revolution in European Wars. 

— One general fact had been evolved during the second 
half of the fifteenth century. It was that society in all 
the states had reverted to a form of government, lost since 
the Roman Empire and based upon the absolute power of 
kings. This is the political side of the revolution in prog- 
ress. It was to affect the arts, sciences and literatures, and 
even for a part of Europe the beliefs, at the same time 
that it modified institutions. The inevitable consequence 
of this first transformation, which places the peoples with 
their wealth and forces at the disposal of their sovereigns, 
will be to imbue the kings with the desire of aggrandizing 
their dominions. Thus European wars are about to follow 
feudal wars, just as kings have followed nobles. France, 
the first ready, is also the first in the endeavor to issue 
from her frontiers. 

Expedition of Charles VIII into Italy (1494). — The prudent 
Louis XI had been careful not to assert the rights which 
the house of Anjou had bequeathed him over the kingdom 
of Naples. His son, Charles VIII, revived these claims 
with ambitious projects. Not to be hampered in the exe- 
cution of plans which he thought would carry him from 
Naples to Constantinople, and from Constantinople to Jeru- 
salem, he abandoned Cerdagne and Eoussillon to Ferdinand 
the Catholic, and Franche-Comte, Charolais and Artois to 
Maximilian. He crossed the Alps at Mount Ginevra and 
was well received at Turin and in the duchy of Milan, 
where Ludovico il Moro then needed his support against the 
Neapolitans. He forced Pietro de Medici to deliver to him 
Sarzana and Pietra Santa, the two fortresses of the Apen- 
nines, and arrived without encountering any obstacle at 
Florence, which he entered as a conqueror. But when he 
demanded a war contribution, the inhabitants threatened a 
riot and he withdrew, though still holding Pisa and Siena. 



A.D. U94-1498.] WARS IN ITALY 311 

At Rome the cardinals and nobles, who had been harshly- 
treated by Alexander VI, opened the gates to the French. 
The Pope took refuge in the castle of San Angelo. Charles 
trained his cannon on the ancient fortress and demanded 
the son of the pontiff, Caesar Borgia, as hostage. Also he 
demanded that Zizim, the brother of Sultan Bayezid II, 
who was then with the Pope, should be surrendered to him, 
thinking this prisoner would advance his ultimate plans in 
the East. A few days later the former captive escaped. 
The latter was given uj), but soon afterward died, perhaps 
from poison. At San Germano, Ferdinand II, king of Na- 
ples, wished to fight but his soldiers deserted and Charles 
entered the capital without breaking a lance (1495). There 
he had himself crowned King of Naples, Emperor of the East, 
and King of Jerusalem. He speedily alienated all parties. 

While he gave himself up to festivity, in his rear Venice 
formed a league against him, which included Ludovico il 
Moro, Pope Alexander VI, Maximilian, Ferdinand the 
Catholic, and Henry VII of England. Forty thousand men 
lay in wait for him at the foot of the Apennines. Warned 
by Commines, he hastily marched northward, leaving in 
the south 11,000 men. The battle of Fornovo reopened his 
road to the Alps, but Italy was lost and no fruit remained 
from this brilliant expedition. 

Italy freed from the foreigner returned to her domestic 
quarrels. Ludovico implored the aid of the Emperor Maxi- 
milian, who suffered a ridiculous defeat before Leghorn. 
In the E-omagna civil war continued between the Pope and 
the barons, in Tuscany between Pisa and Florence, in Flor- 
ence itself between the partisans and the enemies of Savona- 
rola. The latter perished at the stake (1498), but his death 
did not restore harmony. 

Louis XII (1498). Conquest of Milan and Naples. — 
Louis XII, grandson of a brother of Charles VI, suc- 
ceeded his cousin, whose widow he married to prevent her 
carrying Brittany to another house. He inherited not only 
the claims of Charles VIII to Naples, but also those of his 
grandmother, Valentine Visconti, to Milanese territory 
which had been usurped by the Sforza. Cajoling or brib- 
ing the neutrality or support of Caesar Borgia, Venice and 
Florence, he sent Trivulcio, an Italian mercenary, to con- 
quer Milan. Ludovico il Moro lost, regained and again lost 
the city, but was finally betrayed by his troops and was 



312 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1500-1511. 

confined in France in the castle of Loches. Master of 
Milan, Louis sought to acquire the kingdom of Naples with- 
out striking a blow. Therefore he shared it in advance 
with Ferdinand the Catholic. He reserved for himself the 
title of King, together with the Abruzzi, Terra di Lavoro, 
and the capital. Ferdinand asked nothing but Apulia and 
Calabria. The unfortunate Frederick, king of Naples, find- 
ing himself betrayed by the Spaniard Gonsalvo of Cordona, 
placed himself at the mercy of the king of France, who 
offered him a retreat on the banks of the Loire. But the 
conquest made, disputes soon arose between the Spaniards 
and the French. Perfidious negotiations gave Gonsalvo 
time to bring up his troops. The French generals were 
everywhere defeated and their forces again evacuated the 
kingdom (1504). 

To retain at least the Milanese territory, Louis XII 
signed the disastrous treaty of Blois. His claims to Na- 
ples he renounced in favor of Prince Charles, the sovereign 
of the Netherlands, who was destined to become Charles V 
of Germany. It was stipulated that Charles should wed 
Madame Claude, the daughter of the king. The dowry of 
the bride was to be Burgundy and Brittany. Public opin- 
ion cried out against this dangerous marriage, so Louis 
assembled the States General. They declared that the two 
provinces were inalienable, and implored the king to betroth 
his daughter to his presumptive heir, Francis, Duke of 
Angouleme. 

League of Cambrai (1508). The Holy League (1511). — 
Julius II. succeeded Alexander VI. This warlike Pope 
undertook to expel from Italy those whom he called bar- 
barians. He also aimed at humbling Venice and at render- 
ing the Holy See the dominating power of the peninsula. 
First he managed to unite every one against Venice. Louis 
XII wished to recover from that republic the places for- 
merly acquired from the duchy of Milan. Ferdinand the 
Catholic claimed from it several maritime cities of the 
kingdom of Naples. The Emperor Maximilian was desir- 
ous of extending his sway in Friuli. All the jealousies and 
desires coalesced therefore in 1508, at Cambrai. 

At Anagdello Louis gained over the Venetians a victory 
which permitted his allies to fill their hands with Venetian 
booty. Thereupon the Pope promptly turned this league 
against his successful confederate, and formed the Holy 



A.D. 1511-1515.] WARS IN ITALY 313 

League to expel the French from Italy. Setting an ex- 
ample, in person he stormed the cities and entered them 
through the breach. Louis assembled at Pisa a council to 
depose him. Julius convoked another council at the Lat- 
eran, which excommunicated the king, and drew into alli- 
ance all the Catholic powers, even including the Swiss, upon 
whom Louis was lavishing his money. 

Invasion of France (1513). Treaties of Peace (1514). — 
At first France was victorious, thanks to the talents of the 
youthful Gaston de Foix, who drove the Swiss back to their 
mountains, captured Brescia from the Venetians and de- 
feated all the allies at Eavenna. But he was slain in that 
last battle. Under his successor. La Palisse, the French 
retreated to the Alps. Maximilian Sforza, the son of Ludo- 
vico il Moro, reentered Milan. Then France was invaded 
from three sides. Ferdinand the Catholic threatened French 
Navarre. The English and Germans routed the French 
cavalry at the battle of Spurs. Lastly, the Swiss pene- 
trated as far as Dijon, and their withdrawal was purchased 
by payment in gold. The only ally of France was James 
IV, king of Scotland. He shared her evil fortune and was 
defeated and slain at Flodden Field by the English. Louis 
begged a truce from his enemies. He disavowed the council 
of Pisa, and persuaded Henry VIII to return to his island, 
promising a pension of 100,000 crowns for ten years. Thus, 
after fifteen years of war, after immense loss of blood and 
money, France was no farther advanced than when the 
reign of Charles VIII began. Louis died on January 1, 
1515. His domestic administration had been superior to 
his foreign policy. He created two parliaments, one at 
Provence and another in Normandy, suppressed the use of 
Latin in criminal procedure, stopped pillage by soldiers, and 
caused commerce and agriculture to thrive. So he has been 
surnamed the Father of his People. 



314 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1497-1512. 



VII 

THE ECONOMICAL REVOLUTION 

Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope (1497). — The end 
of the Middle Ages is marked, not only by the destruction 
of hitherto prevalent political forms, but also by the simul- 
taneous revolution in commercial affairs, consequent upon 
the discovery of America and of the passage to the Indies 
around the Cape of Grood Hope. 

Up to that time, commerce had followed the routes 
marked out by the Greeks and the Romans. The products 
of the East reached Europe by the Red Sea and Egypt, or 
through Persia and the Black Sea. But the peoples who 
bordered on the Atlantic had long been turning their gaze 
toward the mysterious expanse of its unknown waters. 
They had become familiar with its tempests and had gained 
confidence in the compass. The Normans had been the 
first to enter upon the path of maritime discoveries along 
the western coast of Africa. There the Portuguese, more 
advantageously situated, followed and outstripped them. 
In 1472 they crossed the equator. In 1486 Bartolomeo 
Diaz discovered the Cape of Storms, which King John II 
more wisely named the Cape of Good Hope. In fact, 
Vasco da Gama soon sailed round the African continent and 
reached Calicut on the Malabar coast (1498). Later on 
Camoens in his Lusiad painted this heroic expedition. At 
Calicut Alvarez (^abral founded the first European estab- 
lishment in the Indies. On the way thither he had been 
cast upon the coast of Brazil. 

Colonial Empire of the Portuguese. — The true creator of 
the Portuguese colonies was Albuquerque. By the capture 
of Socotora and Ormuz, he closed the ancient routes of 
Indian commerce to the Mussulmans and to Venice. He 
gave to Portuguese India its capital by taking possession 
of Goa (1510). He conquered Malacca and secured the 
alliance of the kings of Siam and Pegu and the possession 
of the Molucca Islands. While preparing one expedition 




L'opjrlglii. 1898, by T. Y. Cro»«ll & C. 




Engrared byCultoo. Ohmaoi' Co., N.T. 



A.D. 1492-1518.] THE ECONOMICAL REVOLUTION 315 

against Egypt and another against Arabia, where he wished 
to destroy Mecca and Medina, he was arrested by an un- 
merited disgrace (1515). The conquest continued under 
John de Castro, who seized Cambaye. Japan was dis- 
covered in 1542, and a trading station set up opposite 
Canton in the island of Sanciam. Goa was the centre of 
Portuguese domination. The other principal points in 
their empire were Mozambique, Sofala and Melinda on the 
African coast, whence they obtained gold-dust and ivory ; 
Muscat and Ormuz, on the Persian Gulf, whither came the 
products of Central Asia; Diu, on the coast of Malabar; 
Negapatam, on that of Coromandel; Malacca, in the pe- 
ninsula of the same name, which threw into their hands the 
commerce of the countries of Indo-China ; and the Moluccas, 
where they occupied Ternate and Timor, and whence they 
exported spices. Their trading stations on the western 
coast of Africa and on the Congo were of no importance 
until after the establishment of the slave trade. For a long 
time, the only colonists whom Brazil received were crim- 
inals and deported Jews. 

Christopher Columbus. Colonial Empire of the Spaniards. 
— The discovery of America had taken place earlier, in 1492. 
The Genoese navigator, Christopher Columbus, engrossed 
with the idea that India must extend far toward the west 
as a counterbalance to the European continent, hoped to 
reach its furthest shore by directing his course westward 
across the Atlantic. E-ebuffed as a visionary by the Senate 
of Genoa and by the king of Portugal, as well as for a 
time by the court of Spain, he succeeded in obtaining from 
Isabella three small vessels. After sailing for two months 
he landed on October 11, 1492, in Guanahani, one of the 
Lucaya Islands, which he named San Salvador. Only dur- 
ing his third voyage in 1849 did he touch the continent, 
without knowing it, and on the fourth in 1502 discovered 
the coast of Columbia. He still believed that he had reached 
the shores of India. Hence was derived the name. West 
Indies, which long prevailed. The name America refers to 
Amerigo Vespucci, who merely enjoyed the inferior distinc- 
tion of landing on the mainland before Columbus. 

The route once found, discoveries followed each other in 
rapid succession. In 1513 Balboa traversed the Isthmus of 
Panama and caught sight of the Great Ocean. In 1518 Gri- 
jalva discovered Mexico, of which Fernando Cortes effected 



316 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1519-1534. 

the conquest (1519-1521). In 1520 Magellan reached the 
strait to which his name has been given between South 
America and Tierra del Fuego. He traversed the Pacific 
Ocean, where he died, and his comrades returned to Spain 
by way of the Moluccas and the Cape of Good Hope. They 
were the first to make the circuit of the globe. The advent- 
urers, Almagro and Pizarro, gave to the crown of Spain 
Peru and Chili. Others founded on the opposite coast 
Buenos Ayres, at the mouth of the Plata. In 1534 Cartier 
discovered Canada for Prance. 

The Portuguese colonies rapidly declined. They were 
only a line of trading posts along the coasts of Africa and 
Hindustan, without power of resistance, because few Portu- 
guese settled there. The Spanish colonies, which in the 
beginning aimed not so much at commerce as at the develop- 
ment of the mines, attracted on the contrary many Spaniards 
to the New World, and formed in America a compact domi- 
nation, divided into the two governments of Mexico and 
Lima. At the present day Mexico and South America are 
dominated by Spanish blood, while Brazil is Portuguese. 

Results. — These discoveries threw open to the industrious 
activity of the men of the West both a New World and also 
that East where so much idle wealth was locked up. They 
changed the course and form of trade. For land commerce, 
which hitherto had held first rank, maritime commerce was 
about to be substituted. As a result the cities of the in- 
terior were to decline and those on the coast to expand. 
Moreover commercial importance passed from the countries 
bathed by the Mediterranean to the countries situated on 
the Atlantic, from the Italians to the Spaniards and the 
Portuguese, and later on from these latter to the Dutch 
and the English. Not only did these peoples grow rich, 
but they were enriched in a peculiar manner. The mines 
of Mexico and Peru threw into European circulation an 
enormous mass of specie. Industry, commerce and agri- 
culture developed on receiving the capital which they re- 
quired in order to thrive. " The third part of the kingdom 
of France," says a writer of the sixteenth century, '^was 
put under cultivation in the course of a few years." All 
this created a new power in personal wealth which fell into 
the hands of the burgher class, and which in after centuries 
was to battle with the landed wealth still remaining in the 
hands of the lords. 



A.D. 1540.] THE ECONOMICAL REVOLUTION 317 

By means of the posting stations which Louis XI had 
organized, and the canals with locks which Venice began to 
construct in 1481, communication became more rapid and 
more easy. When to the letters of exchange, devised by 
the Jews in the Middle Ages for the purpose of saving 
their fortunes from their persecutors, were added the deposit 
and credit banks, instituted by the Hanse, the Lombards 
and the Tuscans, it came to pass that capital circulated as 
easily as produce. We have already seen a banker, Cosmo 
de Medici, become a prince. Lastly, the system of insurance, 
practised first at Barcelona and Florence, and later on at 
Bruges, began the great system of guarantees which at the 
present day gives to commerce such audacity and security. 
Thus labor was making for itself a place in the new society. 
Through it, by means of order, economy and intelligence, the 
descendants of the slaves of antiquity and of the serfs of 
the Middle Ages became the leaders of the industrial world 
and masters of money, and were one day to find themselves 
the equals of the ancient m.asters of the land. 



318 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1450. 



VIII 

THE REVOLUTION IN ARTS AND LETTERS, OR THE 
RENAISSANCE 

The Invention of Printing. — The ardor which impelled men 
of action to abandon beaten paths and rush into unexplored 
ways was shared by men of learning. They also aspired 
after another world. They sought it, not in front but in 
the rear. Like Columbus, they thought they were only 
travelling toward the old land, but on their route thither 
they, like him, found a new one. 

Weary of the vain disputes of scholasticism and the quib- 
bles of a school which its barbarous Latin speech rendered 
obscure, they threw themselves toward the half-extinguished 
lights of antiquity. They ransacked monastic libraries, those 
storehouses of old books. The discovery of a Greek or 
Latin manuscript, or of an antique statue, caused the joy of 
a victory. But only a few men would have profited by the 
new spirit, which reviving antiquity was breathing upon 
the world, had not an invention appeared by means of which 
the treasures, otherwise reserved to a small number, could 
become the domain of all. Guttenberg created printing by 
devising movable characters. As early as 1455, the first 
printed book made its appearance. This was a Bible. The 
new art spread rapidly throughout all Christian Europe, and 
the price of books marvellously decreased. In 1500 Aldus 
Manutius at Venice placed on sale a whole collection of 
ancient authors at about fifty cents the volume. A single 
bookseller of Paris, Josse Bade, published as many as 400 
works, the majority in folio. In 1529, the Colloquia of Eras- 
mus was printed in an edition of 24,000 copies. Thus eager 
were people to learn, " for they began to perceive that they 
had been living in mental slavery as well as in bodily servi- 
tude." 

The ancients wrote upon parchment or papyrus, both ma- 
terials of great cost, the Chinese upon silk, the Arabs of 
Damascus upon cotton, the Spanish Arabs upon a paper 



A.D. 1470-1520.] THE REVOLUTION IN ARTS AND LETTERS 319 

made from flax and hemp. Thus the printers, at the very 
beginning of their labors, had at their disposal a low-priced 
product which could receive the imprint of the characters. 

Renaissance of Letters. — Italy eagerly seized upon the new 
invention. Before the year 1470, there were already printers 
at Eome, Venice and Milan. Everywhere schools, libraries 
and universities were founded. The ancient authors were 
published and translated. Not only the Fathers of the 
Church Avere published to uphold the faith, but also the ora- 
tors, historians and philosophers. Thereby faith was ex- 
posed to peril, for thus were opened to the mind new horizons 
where reason was to seek and find its domain. Pope Julius 
II was not always surrounded by captains and diplomats. 
Quite as many learned men and artists were to be seen at 
his side. " Polite letters," he said, " are the silver of plebe- 
ians, the gold of nobles, the diamonds of princes." The day 
on which the Laocoon was discovered in the Baths of Titus, 
he caused the bells of all the churches in Pome to be rung. 
Leo X paid 500 sequins for five manuscript volumes of 
Titus Livius, and was the friend as well as the patron of 
Raphael and Michael Angelo. 

At that period only three countries thought and produced. 
Italy was foremost with Ariosto, Machiavelli, Guicciardini 
and all her artistic geniuses. France came second, with 
Marot, Pabelais, Calvin, Amyot, Montaigne and a host of 
learned men or jurisconsults whose fame still endures, like 
Cujas, Pithou, Godefroy and Dumoulin. Germany stood 
third, with Ulric von Hutten, the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs 
and the Ciceronians, with Luther and his Latin writings at 
the head. The Netherlands presented Erasmus, a hardy 
thinker but timid-hearted man, whose Latin works enjoyed 
an immense success. As for England, she was healing the 
wounds inflicted by the War of the Roses. As for Spain, 
her eyes were turned far less upon antiquity than toward 
America and her mines, toward Italy and the Netherlands, 
where the bands of Charles V so loved to indulge in war 
and pillage. 

Renaissance of Arts. — Italy was their natural cradle, since 
there the finest remains of ancient art were to be found. As 
early as the beginning of the fifteenth century, Brunelleschi 
substituted the rounded for the pointed arch, and for the 
tortured lines of the florid Gothic, the straight line of the 
Greek temples or the elegant curve of the Roman dome. For 



320 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1500-1550. 

Julius II Bramante constructed Saint Peter's at Kome, 
which Michael Angelo crowned with the immense cupola, 
the idea of which he had derived from the Pantheon of 
Agrippa. The sculptors of Florence and Eome were unable 
to excel their classic rivals, but Leonardo da Vinci, Michael 
Angelo, Raphael and Titian far surpassed their most illus- 
trious predecessors and created painting, which with music 
has remained the distinctive modern art. 

In the field of the arts, Italy in the sixteenth century was 
the teacher of the nations. France followed her close be- 
hind. Her architects reared many chateaux and palaces, 
the Louvre, the Tuileries, Fontainebleau, Blois and Cham- 
bord, where elegance and grace are blended with strength. 
Two French sculptors are still famous, Jean Goujon and 
Germain Pilon. Germany had but two painters, Albert 
Dlirer and Holbein. Engraving, recently invented, m.ulti- 
plied the masterpieces of the artists, just as printing had 
popularized masterpieces in literature, and Palestrina began 
the great school of music. 

Renaissance in Science. — Science was still hesitating 
between the dreams of the Middle Ages and the stern reason 
which guides it at the present day. Men did not know 
that the physical world is subject to changeless laws. 
They continued to believe in cajoricious powers, in magicians 
and sorcerers, whom they burned by thousands. At Wtirz- 
burg 158 persons were sent to the stake in the course of 
two years (1527-1528). But Italy had several geometers, 
and as early as 1507 the Pole, Copernicus, discovered the 
truth concerning the planetary system. 

Thus, while the navigators were opening new worlds to 
human activity and through artists and learned men 
modern genius was acquiring fresh vigor from the ancients, 
science was assigning its place to the sun and to the earth 
and the planets their parts in the universe. Is it a marvel 
that the century which beheld these mighty results of 
audacity and intelligence should have abandoned itself to 
the resistless power of thought ? 



A.D. 1510.] THE REVOLUTION IN CREEDS 321 



IX 

THE REVOLUTION IN CREEDS, OR THE REFORMATION 

The Clergy in the Sixteenth Century. — By its reverence 
for the two antiquities, the sacred and profane, which had 
just been as it were rediscovered, the literature of the six- 
teenth century led to the religious Eeformation, whose true 
character was a mixture of the reasoning spirit borrowed 
from the pagans, and of theological ardor derived from 
the Bible and the Fathers. The prime author of this revo- 
lution was the clergy itself. What was there in common 
between the Church of the early days, poor, humble, ardent, 
and the opulent, lordly, indolent Church of Leo X, who 
lived like a gentleman of the Eenaissance, with huntsmen, 
artists and poets, rather than with theologians ? And of 
those bishop-princes who had armies, and of those monks 
who were so vicious and so ignorant, what was not said? 
For a long time the most devout had been demanding the 
reform of the Church in its head and its members. " I 
see," said Cardinal Julian to Pope Eugenius IV, "that 
the axe is laid to the root; the tree leans, and instead of 
propping it up, we are hurling it to the earth." Bossuet 
himself recognized the necessity of a reform. 

Luther (1517). — The strife began with the pamphlets of 
Erasmus and Hutten. It became serious only when Luther 
had drawn the theologians after him into the lists. This 
son of a Saxon miner of Eisleben was an Augustinian 
monk. He became the most esteemed doctor of the Uni- 
versity of Wittenberg. During a journey to Rome he beheld 
the disorders of the Church. The scandal of indulgences, 
whence Leo X sought money for the completion of Saint 
Peter's, led him to examine the very principles of this doc- 
trine. Finding the system of indulgences contrary to the 
teachings of the primitive Church, he fought against it. 
The Dominican Tetzel was the broker of these spiritual 
wares in Germany. Luther nailed to the doors of the 
church in Wittenberg ninety-five propositions concerning 



322 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1517-1525. 

indulgences. Tetzel replied by 110 counter propositions. 
The battle had begun. 

At first Leo X would see in it nothing but a quarrel 
between monks and sent to Germany the legate Cajetano 
to bring them to their senses. Luther appealed from the 
legate to the Pope, then from the Pope to a future council. 
Finally, rejecting even the authority of councils, or of all 
human utterances as opposed to the Word of God, as set 
forth in the Gospels and as he understood it, he admitted 
no other law for the believer than the very text of Scripture. 

Thus Luther " plunged into schism." The Eoman Cath- 
olic faith was nourished from the two sources of Scripture 
and tradition. He denied the latter source. Eetaining 
the former, he admitted no mediator between him and the 
sacred text to interpret the latter and solve its diffi.- 
culties. He beheld in the Scriptures neither the author- 
ity of the Pope, nor sacraments, nor monastic vows. Hence 
he rejected them. The Church on becoming organized had 
taught that even a society of believers is impossible unless 
its members think that they are bound to add to the merits 
of their faith those of their works. Luther, an ardent monk, 
and a theologian reared in the spirit of Saint Paul and 
Saint Augustine, did not hesitate before the formidable 
problem of grace. In his book On Christian Liberty, 
addressed to the Pope in 1520, he immolated the free will 
of man, and grace became the essential principle of faith. 
Calvin hence deduced later the doctrine of predestination. 
Leo X excommunicated the bold innovator, who neverthe- 
less was simply looking backward, and returning to the 
apostolic age. Luther returning blow for blow publicly 
burned the papal bull (1520). He was protected by the 
Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise. When Charles V 
in order to win over the Catholics cited him to apx^ear 
before the Diet of Worms, he boldly presented himself. 
He was so well defended that the Church did not dare 
seize him as it had formerly seized John Huss and send 
him to the stake. The elector prudently had him carried 
off and kept under guard at the Castle of the Wartburg, 
whence Luther stirred up all Germany by his pamphlets. 

As a matter of fact, the reformer Avas serving well the 
interests of the princes. He restored to their hands the 
direction of religious affairs. The secularization of church 
property tempted their greed. In 1525 the Grand Master of 



A.D. 1525-1555.] THE REVOLUTION IN GREEDS 323 

the Teutonic Order declared himself the Hereditary Duke 
of Prussia. Already the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave 
of Hesse Cassel, the Dukes of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and 
Zell, and a great number of imperial cities, had embraced the 
Reformation and at the same time seized the ecclesiastical 
domains situated in their territories. 

The peopie wished to have its share in this immense 
booty. In Suabia and Thuringia the peasants rose, not to 
hasten the reform in the Church, but to accomplish that of 
society, wherein they meant to establish absolute equality 
and community of goods. Luther himself preached against 
them a war of extermination and those wretched persons 
perished by thousands (1525). 

This savage demagogy, which appeared again with the 
Anabaptists of Munster, frightened every one, but especially 
the Catholics. The Diet of Spires forbade the propagation 
of the new doctrines (1529). The followers of the Reforma- 
tion protested against this decree in the name of liberty of 
conscience, and hence received the name of Protestants. In 
the following year, they published at Augsburg a confession 
of their belief which has remained the creed and the bond 
of all Luther's followers (1530). 

Thanks to Francis I and to Souleiman, the emperor was 
occupied in defending himself on all his frontiers. He 
shrank from creating for himself a new enemy in the heart 
of the empire by attacking the Reformers. Pie avoided 
such risk until after the battle of Crespy and the death 
of the king of France. The victory of Mtihlberg (1547) 
seemed to place Germany at his discretion. In order to 
impose religious peace he promulgated the Interim at Augs- 
burg, which displeased both parties and reduced the Ger- 
man princes to the powerlessness of French or English 
nobles. The supreme power of Charles V was overthrown 
by the alliance of the Protestants with the king of France, 
Henry II. Maurice of Saxony came near capturing the 
emperor at Innsbruck (1551), and the peace of Augsburg 
granted the Reformers entire liberty of conscience (1555). 

The Lutheran Reformation in the Scandinavian States. — 
At that period the new doctrines had already triumphed 
through almost all Northern Europe. Gustavus Vasa, who 
had delivered Sweden from the Danish domination, wel- 
comed them as a means of humbling the episcopal aris- 
tocracy and of raising himself to absolute power. 



324 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1517-1550. 

In Denmark on the contrary the revolution was effected 
in the interests of the secular aristocracy, which suppressed 
the States General, held royalty in tutelage for 120 years 
and bowed the people under a harsh subjection. 

The Reformation in Switzerland. Zwingli (1517). Calvin 
(1536). — In Switzerland the Reformation was born as early 
as in Germany. In 1517 Zwingli declared that the Gospel 
was the only rule of faith. The evangelical refigion spread 
in German Switzerland, except in the original cantons of 
Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, which remained 
faithful to the ancient faith. The war, which broke out in 
1531, and in which Zwingli perished, was favorable to the 
Catholics. Each canton still remained sovereign as to regu- 
lating its worship, but the evangelical doctrine was expelled 
from the common possessions. This was a defeat for Protes- 
tantism. On the other hand, it acquired Geneva, which had 
long been discontented with its bishop, its temporal sov- 
ereign, and was divided between the so-called parties of the 
Mamelukes and the Huguenots. Thanks to the support of 
Berne, the Huguenot party carried the day and maintained 
the independence of the city against Savoy (1536). 

At this juncture Calvin arrived. He was a Frenchman 
from Noyon, who had just published a remarkable book, 
The Christian Institutes, wherein he condemned every- 
thing which did not seem to him prescribed by the Gospel, 
while Luther, less audacious, allowed everything to subsist 
which did not appear to him positively contrary to it. His 
eloquence, the austerity of his life and his radical doctrines 
gave him in Geneva an authority which he used to convert 
that joyous city into a sombre cloister, where every frivolous 
word or deed was punished as a crime. A poet was beheaded 
for his verses. Michael Servetus was burned for having 
thought otherwise concerning the Trinity than did the spirit- 
ual director. But none the less, Geneva became the citadel, 
and as it were the sanctuary of the Calvinistic Reformation. 

The Reformation in the Netherlands, France, Scotland 
and England. — The seventeen provinces of the Low Coun- 
tries formed a federated state under the direction of an 
Austrian or a Spanish governor. Each had its own con- 
stitution and its assembly. These free institutions, the 
independent spirit of the population and its nearness to 
Germany favored the propagation in that country of Luther's 
Reformation. Charles Y stifled it by the horrors of a sp©- 



A.D. 1585-1546.] THE REVOLUTION IN CREEDS 325 

cial inquisition, which punished with death more than 30,000 
persons. But Lutheranism gave way to Calvinism, which 
had come from Switzerland by way of Alsace, or from Eng- 
land, during the reign of Edward VI, and which spread 
rapidly throughout the Dutch provinces. 

Protestantism was not established in France until com- 
paratively late. The Sorbonne refuted the new doctrines 
and the law suppressed them by force. Moreover there had 
been fewer abuses among the Gallican clergy, as they had 
possessed little wealth or power. Though many provincial 
nobles regretted the domains formerly ceded to the Church 
by their fathers, though more independent doctrines grat- 
ified their feudal inclinations, and though desires for politi- 
cal enfranchisement were mingled with desires for religious 
liberty, yet the inhabitants of the great cities remained 
strongly Catholic. In France a foothold was gained, not by 
Lutheranism, but by Calvinism. Francis I, who supported 
the Protestants in Germany, did not tolerate them in his 
own kingdom. He had the Lutherans burned before his 
eyes and approved the horrible massacre of the Vaudois. 
Henry II, by the edict of Chateaubriand, decreed the same 
death penalty against heretics. He even had two magis- 
trates, suspected of heresy, arrested in open Parliament; 
and one of them, Anne Dubourg, was burned at the stake. 
Persecution was destined, as always, to bring about plots 
and a frightful struggle. 

It was Calvinism which won the day in Scotland. Marie 
of Guise, the widow of James V, left the management of 
affairs to Cardinal Beaton, who defended Catholicism by 
extremely rigorous measures, but was assassinated (1546). 
The Reformation took possession of all Scotland, where 
Knox, who was summoned from Geneva, established the 
Presbyterian system. 

In England the Reformation was not the work of the 
people, but of a despot, who found the country disposed 
for this revolution by the memories of Wicliffe and the 
Lollards. Being smitten with Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII 
asked Pope Clement VII to dissolve his marriage with 
Catherine of Aragon. As the pontiff hesitated, he made 
his own Parliament pronounce the divorce. On being ex- 
communicated, he proclaimed himself the head of the Angli- 
can Church (1534), suppressed the monastic orders, and 
confiscated the property of the convents (1539). Though 



326 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1539-1562. 

Henry VIII separated himself from the Holy See, he 
claimed that he remained orthodox. He retained the title 
of Defender of the Faith, which the Pope had bestowed 
upon him for writing a book against Luther. Without dis- 
crimination, he punished with death the man who denied 
the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and the man who de- 
nied the religious supremacy of the king. Very many sen- 
tences of death were pronounced. Spoliation followed 
murder. The nation, which through love of repose had 
abandoned its political liberty after the War of the Eoses, 
beheld its money, its blood, its very beliefs, sacrificed to a 
tyrant. But by publishing an English translation of the 
sacred Scriptures, Henry unwittingly favored the spirit of 
investigation, which caused many sects to spring forth in 
England and paved the way for the revolution of 1648. 
Under Edward VI this "beheaded Catholicism," as the 
Reformation of Henry VIII was called, gave way to Prot- 
estantism pure and simple (1547). 

A Catholic reaction set in after the death of the latter 
prince (1553). Earl Warwick placed upon the throne Lady 
Jane Grey. Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII, caused this 
ten days' queen to be beheaded, then married Philip II, 
king of Spain, and reconciled England with the Holy See. 
This restoration was marked by numerous executions. Be- 
tween February, 1555, and September, 1558, 400 reformers 
perished, 290 of whom were burned at the stake. Drawn 
by Philip into the war against France, Mary lost Calais, and 
only survived this disaster by a few months (1558). She 
often said that if her body were opened, the word Calais 
would be found written upon her heart. The Anglican 
Church, as it exists to-day, was finally constituted in 1562 
by Queen Elizabeth, the successor of Mary. 

Character of the Three Reformed Churches. — Thus in 
less than half a century, Switzerland, Great Britain, Sweden, 
Denmark, half of Germany and a part of France had sepa- 
rated themselves from Catholicism. As the principle of re- 
form was free examination, it had already produced many 
sects, whose number was destined to be still further in- 
creased. However, three great systems were dominant: 
Lutheranism in the north of Germany and the Scandi- 
navian States ; Calvinism in Switzerland, France, the Neth- 
erlands and Scotland ; and Anglicanism in England. Their 
common dogma was justification. 



A.D. 1560.] THE REVOLUTION IN CREEDS 327 

Of the three systems, Calvinism differed most from Ro- 
man Catholicism. It regarded the Lord's Supper as a sim- 
ple, commemorative rite. The Lutherans admitted the Real 
Presence, but not transubstantiation. The Anglicans were 
Calvinistic in dogma, and Roman Catholic in liturgy. Their 
Church, with its archbishops, bishops, and its numerous 
revenues, differed from the Catholic Church mainly in the 
simplicity of costume, in the cold austerity of its worship, 
in the employment of the vernacular language, and in the 
marriage of its priests. Subject to royal supremacy, its exist- 
ence was intimately bound up with the maintenance of the 
monarchy ; and the clergy in England was, as it has been 
in the Catholic countries, the firmest support of royalty. 
The Presbyterian Church of Scotland was democratic, like 
all Calvinistic churches, and its clergy were equal. Puri- 
tans were later to declare every Christian a priest, if he has 
the inspiration. The Lutheran countries retained the epis- 
copal form. Their bishops had neither wealth nor liberty, 
as the prince had inherited nearly all the spiritual power 
which had been wrested from the Pope, and drew up the 
creeds. "Luther," said Melancthon, "has placed on our 
heads a yoke of iron, instead of a yoke of Avood." 

Consequences of the Reformation. — The religious revolu- 
tion at first strengthened the political revolution, since it 
added to the civil rights of j)i'iiices the right to control the 
conscience. The Calvinistic communities, however, recog- 
nized spiritual x^ower as vested only in the assembly of the 
faithful. 

As to the effect on general civilization, this insurrection 
of the investigating spirit was at first of small advantage to 
the progress of public reason. In Germany all utterance 
was bent upon theology. As in the palmy days of scholas- 
ticism, men neglected classic literature to occupy themselves 
only with barren and insolvable questions. The Renais- 
sance died in consequence. Painters and poets disappeared 
before the iconoclastic rage of the one party and the theo- 
logical vagaries of the other. 

Luther and Calvin, the former of whom intrusted to the 
princes the spiritual power, and the latter of whom burned 
Michael Servetus and taught predestination, are not directly 
the fathers of modern liberty. But on the field, where man 
toils and sows, a harvest which he does not expect springs 
up. The denial of the Pope's absolute authority in the 



328 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1560. 

spiritual order inevitably ended in the denial of the abso- 
lute authority of kings in the philosophical and social order. 
Luther and Calvin unwittingly led to Bacon and Descartes, 
and Bacon and Descartes as unconsciously led to Locke and 
Mirabeau. 



A.D. 1522-1542.] THE CATHOLIC RESTORATION 329 



X 

THE CATHOLIC RESTORATION 

Reforms at the Papal Court and in the Church. The 
Jesuits. — The papacy had in a few years lost half of its 
empire. Roused by this solemn warning, it began a work 
of internal reformation which did honor to four great Popes 
— Paul III, Paul IV, Pius V and Sixtus V. The tribunal 
of the Rota, the penitentiary, the Roman chancellery, were 
better organized. A new Inquisition, whose superior tri- 
bunal sat at Rome, was instituted in 1542 to search out and 
punish, at home and abroad, all attacks upon the faith. 
Neither rank nor dignity could protect from the jurisdiction 
of the inquisitors, who set to work with such energy that 
the roads leading from Italy to Switzerland and Germany 
were thronged with fugitives. The Congregation of the 
Index permitted no book to be printed until after it had 
been examined and revised. As individuals were executed, 
likewise books were burned. These means, obstinately pur- 
sued, were successful. Roman Catholicism was saved in 
the peninsula, but at what a price ! The subjection of the 
Italians to the house of Austria had suppressed political 
life. The measures taken to prevent or extirpate heresy 
suppressed literary life. Men ceased to think and art de- 
clined like letters. 

The Inquisition was considered only a measure of defence. 
In order to attack, the Holy See multiplied the militia which 
fought in its name. First the ancient monastic orders were 
reformed: in 1522 the Camaldules; in 1525 the Franciscans, 
whence sprang the Capucins. Then new orders were cre- 
ated, as the Theatines in 1524 and the Barnabites in 1530. 
In 1540 the Jesuits were established, whose statutes reveal 
one of the strongest political conceptions which has ever 
existed. In addition to the ordinary vows, the Jesuits swore 
absolute obedience to the Holy See. Instead of shutting 
themselves up in the recesses of a convent, they lived in 
the midst of society, so they might there grasp all the means 



330 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1545-1563. 

of influence. They travelled over the world to keep believ- 
ers in the faith, or convert heretics and barbarians, and they 
sought to control the education of the young. When their 
founder, Ignatius Loyola, died in 1556, the society already 
numbered fourteen provinces, 100 colleges, and 1000 mem- 
bers. Spain and Italy were under their influence, and 
their missionaries were traversing Brazil, India, Japan and 
Ethiopia. 

Council of Trent (1545-1563). — Thus fortified, the 
Church could repudiate those ideas of conciliation which 
had repeatedly arisen, but which the Protestant princes had 
rejected lest they should be compelled to restore the eccle- 
siastical property. The Council of Trent proclaimed the 
inflexibility of the Catholic doctrines. Convoked in 1545 
by Paul III and presided over by his legates, it was sub- 
scribed to by eleven cardinals, twenty-five archbishops, 
168 bishops, thirty-nine procurators of absent bishops, and 
seven generals of religious orders. The Italian prelates 
were in the majority, generally two to one. As the voting 
was by individuals and not by nations, they were the 
masters of the council. The ambassadors of the Catholic 
powers were present at the deliberations. 

Transferred from Trent to Bologna in 1546, restored to 
Trent in 1551, the council dispersed in 1552, at the ap- 
proach of the Lutherans under Maurice of Saxony. Its 
sessions were interrupted for ten years, while Paul IV 
with the help of France, was trying to overthrow the Span- 
ish rule in Italy. When the sword of the Duke of Alva 
had terminated this conflict to the advantage of Spain, 
Pius IV abandoned the temporal cause of Italian inde- 
pendence. He was recompensed in spiritual matters by 
the last decrees of the Council of Trent, which instead of 
following the Fathers of Constance and Basle and setting 
itself above the Pope, humbled itself before his authority. 

The pontiff remained sole judge of the changes to be 
made in discipline, supreme interpreter of the canons, 
undisputed head of the bishops, infallible in matters of 
faith, but nevertheless without posses,sing the personal 
infallibility (se solo) which Pius IX extorted from the 
council of 1870. Thus Rome could console herself for the 
final loss of a part of Europe, as she beheld her power 
doubled in the Catholic nations of the south, which pressed 
religiously about her. 



A.D. 1563.] THE CATHOLIC RESTORATION 331 

The Pope also, in his quality of king, was his own master. 
Pius V celebrated in the victory of Lepanto, won by Don 
John of Austria over the Ottomans, a sort of revival of the 
crusades. Gregory XIII attached his name to the useful 
reform of the calendar. Sixtus V restored order in the j)apal 
states, displaying therein the inflexibility of Louis XI. He 
cleared the Roman country of the hordes of brigands, im- 
proved the finances, enlarged and adorned his capital, whose 
population rose to 100,000 souls, built the Vatican Library 
and annexed to it a printing-office, for the publication of 
sacred books and of the writings of the Fathers. 

Thus reform in the temporal administration of the pontif- 
ical states and reform in the bosom of the Church resulted 
from the efforts of Catholicism, in the second half of the 
sixteenth century, and caused its subsequent greatness. 
When discipline was revived and the scandal of the worldly 
life of prelates was repressed, the religious spirit reawoke. 
Asceticism and consecration again appeared. 

At Rome something more was hoped for than this restora- 
tion of Catholicism to its diminished empire. The image 
of Gregory VII had passed before the eyes of his succes- 
sors, and the regenerated Church had resumed the ambition 
of her great pontiffs. Democratic in the first centuries, 
aristocratic in the Middle Ages, with her powerful bishops, 
who in case of need, threatened the Pope with excommuni- 
cation, and with her councils which enforced her will, she 
had followed the tendency of the civil power, and through 
the necessities of her own defence had culminated in abso- 
lute royalty. 

Unfortunately for her, this constitution of sacerdotal 
royalty took place at the moment when the temporal 
monarchies were too strong to humble themselves under 
any authority whatever. The decisions of the Council of 
Trent as to matters of discipline, were not received in 
France, not even in Spain, and the Catholic sovereigns 
appropriated to themselves a portion of the prerogatives 
which the Protestant princes had obtained by force. But 
when the authority of these monarchs yielded under the 
pressure of a new political revolution, ultramontanism in 
the nineteenth century resumed the work of the sixteenth. 
It was too late, for though the struggle was to be conducted 
this time with greater concentration, the force of the Church 
was less, and the spirit of the world ran in other channels. 



332 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1515-1516. 



XI 

FURTHER WARS IN ITALY. FRANCIS I, CHARLES V 
AND SOULEiMAN 

The Victory of Marignano (1515). — The successor of 
Louis XII was Francis I. Young, ardent and warlike, he 
commenced his reign by an invasion of the Milanese terri- 
tory. He crossed the Alps by the Neck of Argentiere and 
at Marignano attacked 30,000 Swiss, whom he overthrew in 
the '' Battle of the Giants." The Swiss were disgusted with 
these Italian wars. They returned to their mountains, where 
they signed the " perpetual peace " which assured their 
alliance with France until the French Revolution. To 
arrest the young conqueror, Pope Leo X made haste to sign 
a treaty, to the cost of the Church of France, but to the 
mutual profit of the Pope and the king. The Concordat of 
1516 suppressed the ecclesiastical elections which had been 
recognized by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and gave 
the king the direct appointment of the bishops and of the 
beneficed clergy. To the Pope it assigned the annates, or 
first year revenues of vacant sees. In this partition the 
pontiff left the spiritual share to the prince and took the 
temporal share for himself. 

Power of Charles V. — By a series of fortunate marriages, 
a rival and dangerous power had been formed over against 
France. In 1516 Charles of Austria took possession of 
Spain, where Ferdinand the Catholic had just died. He 
found himself master of Austria, the Netherlands, Franche- 
Comte, Naples, Sicily, Spain and America. Francis I, still 
elated by the victor}^ of Marignano, did not fear the master 
of so many divided states. Instead of trying to dismember 
this monstrous power before it could consolidate, he con- 
cluded with Charles the treaty of Noyon, which permitted 
his youthful antagonist at his leisure to gather together all 
his crowns (1516). 

This friendship was broken thjee years later, when the 
imperial throne became vacant through the death of Maxi- 



A.D. 1519-1521.] FURTHER WARS IN ITALY 333 

milian. Charles and Francis became competitors for it. 
The electors deemed those candidates too powerful and chose 
Frederick the Wise. He declined the honor, but advised the 
choice of Charles, since that prince was more interested than 
any one else in defending Germany against the Ottomans, 
who were daily becoming more menacing. So Charles of 
Austria became the Emperor Charles V. His power aided 
by his astuteness threatened the independence of the other 
states. 

France accepted the task of resisting the new Charle- 
magne. The forces of the two adversaries were really less 
unequal than they seemed. France formed a compact and 
in a degree a homogeneous whole which it was difficult to 
crush. Her resources were controlled by a royal house 
which encountered resistance nowhere at home.*^ By the 
Concordat Francis I had just placed the clergy under 
his hand. The feudal aristocracy was already in his 
power, and he boasted of being a king free from tutelage. 
Charles V, on the contrary, met opposition on every side : 
in Spain, from the comuneros; in Flanders, from the 
burghers ; in Germany, from the princes and later on from 
the Protestants. In Austria he had to combat the then 
terrible Ottomans. Besides, he found it very difficult to 
concentrate in one direction all his instruments of action, 
then scattered through so many countries. 

First of all the rivals sought allies. Francis I at the 
interview of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, only succeeded 
in wounding the self-love of Henry VIII, king of England, 
whom he eclipsed in elegant luxury and knightly accom- 
plishments. Charles, less pretentious, gained Wolsey, the 
prime minister of Henry, by promising him the tiara, and 
thus secured the English alliance for himself. Pope Leo X 
also declared for the man who seemed able to arrest the 
fermenting reformation in Germany. 

Francis began hostilities by just complaints against the 
emperor, for not having executed one of the principal clauses 
of the treaty of Noyon in the restitution of French Navarre. 
Six thousand men invaded that country, and the Duke of 
Bouillon attacked Luxemburg. But the French were de- 
feated in Castile, and the Imperialists would have taken 
Mezieres, had not Bayard thrown himself into the place 
(1521). In Italy Lautrec was left without resources, and 
forced to submit to his Swiss mercenaries, who demanded 



334 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1522-1527. 

money, discharge, or battle. So he was completely routed 
at Bicoque (1522). The loss of the Milanese entailed the 
defection of Venice and Genoa. In that same year, Charles 
V placed his preceptor, Adrian VI, on the pontifical throne. 

Battle of Pavia (1525). Treaties of Madrid (1526) and of 
Cambrai (1529). — The very existence of France was then 
imperilled by the treason of the constable of Bourbon, the 
last of the great feudal lords, whom injustice had driven into 
the camp of Charles V. He vanquished the incapable 
Bonnivet at Biagrasso where Bayard was slain (1524), and 
led the Imperialists into Provence. However the peasants 
rose and compelled them to retreat in disorder. The French, 
the king at their head, rushed in pursuit and attacked them 
at Pavia. The artillery was accomplishing marvels, when 
Francis I, charging with his cavalry, placed himself in front 
of his own fire. The battle was lost and the king himself 
was captured (1525). 

Europe was roused and showed herself unwilling to allow 
the destruction of France. Italy, menaced in her indepen- 
dence, and Henry VIII, who was overshadowed by the 
glory of Charles V, and whose minister, Wolsey, had been 
twice tricked by the emperor in his hopes of the promised 
papal tiara, formed a league against the victor. Meanwhile 
Francis I, impatient to escape from captivity, signed the 
disastrous treaty of Madrid (1526), whereby he ceded to 
Charles the province of Burgundy, renounced Milan, Naples 
and Genoa, with the suzerainty over Flanders and Artois, 
reestablished Bourbon in his possessions, and promised to 
wed the sister of the emperor, the queen dowager of 
Portugal. 

Once free, he caused the deputies of Burgundy in the 
assembly of Cognac to declare that the king had no right 
to alienate a national province. The emperor treated 
Francis as a perjurer and the latter accused him of lying. 
The two princes challenged each other to single combat and 
the war again began. Italy was the first victim. Bourbon 
threw upon it an army of fanatical Lutherans, whose leader, 
George Frondsberg, wished to hang the Pope with a golden 
chain. Bourbon was killed under the walls of Rome, but 
his horde captured the city and avenged him by abominable 
rapine and most odious cruelty (1527). Lautrec, who had 
reconquered Milan, marched upon Naples. The defection 
of the Genoese fleet made the expedition a failure. The 



A.D. 1528-1532.] FURTHER WARS IN ITALY 335 

general died of the pest, and the defeat at Landriano drove 
the French from Italy once more. Then ('harles V made 
his appearance there as a master. He forced the dukes of 
Ferrara, Milan and Mantua to acknowledge themselves 
vassals of the empire ; Savoy and Montferrat to renounce 
the French alliance ; Pope Clement VII to crown him king 
of Italy and emperor (1529). France even signed the treaty of 
Cambrai, less harsh but hardly less humiliating than that of 
Madrid. 

Alliances of Francis I. Successes of Souleiman. — Francis 
paved the way for revenge by negotiations which showed 
that the religious spirit, a main characteristic of the Middle 
Ages, was yielding to the political spirit, the sole inspira- 
tion of governments in modern times. He entered into alli- 
ance with the Protestants of Germany, with Souleiman, the 
Ottoman sultan, and later on with the Swedish and Danish 
reformers. Souleiman (1520-1566), as a friend of the arts, 
a protector of letters and the author of the code entitled 
the Khanounname, deserved his triple surname of the Con- 
queror, the Magnificent and the Legislator. In 1521 he 
captured Belgrade, the bulwark of Hungary. In 1522 he 
wrested Rhodes from the Knights of Saint John, despite 
their heroic resistance through five months under their 
Grand Master, Villiers de Tlsle Adam. Souleiman passed 
the Danube with 200,000 men, and destroyed the Hungarian 
army on the fatal field of Mohacz (1526), where perished 
Louis II, the last of the Jagellons. The crown of Hungary 
fell to Ferdinand of Austria. Souleiman supported against 
this brother of Charles V, a Magyar claimant, John Zapoli. 
All Hungary was ravaged, Buda itself fell into his power 
and he marched through Austria to the very walls of 
Vienna, which repelled twenty assaults. To cause this 
reverse to be forgotten the sultan, with his own hands 
crowned his vassal king of Hungary in Buda. 

Two years later he appeared again in Austria at the head 
of 300,000 men. Fortunately Gratz, a small fortress in 
Styria, delayed him for a month. During the siege of this 
town he received the first embassy of Francis I. He in- 
tended to invade Germany, but Charles V had had time 
to collect 150,000 combatants. Lutherans and Catholics 
joined hands against the crescent, and Francis I dared not 
aid his formidable ally by a diversion on the Rhine or in 
Italy. No general battle was fought. At the end of six 



336 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1532-1540. 

weeks the sultan learned that a Spanish fleet had just 
entered the Dardanelles and was threatening Constanti- 
nople, so he withdrew (1532). Meanwhile the Turkish 
navy was being developed under the celebrated Khaireddin 
Barbarossa. This corsair, now become the admiral of the 
Ottoman fleets, scoured the Mediterranean with 100 vessels. 
While in Asia the sultan was taking Tauris and Bagdad 
from the Persians, he seized Tunis, which became a lair 
whence pirates devastated the whole Spanish and Italian 
coast. Charles V sent two expeditions against them. In 
the first with 400 vessels commanded by Doria he took 
possession of La Gouletta at the entrance of the Gulf of 
Tunis, and freed 22,000 captives (1535). Less fortunate six 
years later at Algiers, he beheld his fleet dispersed by a 
tempest, and could scarcely save its pitiable remnants. 
The emperor afforded more effectual protection to the com- 
merce of Christian peoples by ceding the island of Malta to 
the Knights of Bhodes, who for a long time repressed the 
pirates. While Charles V played the part of Defender of 
Christianity, Francis I seemed to be its enemy. The very 
year of the expedition to Tunis, he signed with Souleiman 
the first of those treaties called capitulations. 

New War between Charles V and Francis I. — Charles V 
provoked a new Avar with France by causing an agent of 
the French king to be put to death in Constantinople. His 
second invasion of Provence was no more successful than 
the first. He found the country systematically devastated 
by Montmorency, who refused to give battle, and was 
forced to a disastrous retreat (1536). 

Then Francis I cited him before Parliament as a trai- 
torous vassal, since he still held the fiefs of Flanders and 
Artois. A desperate struggle seemed begun, but a grand 
victory won by Souleiman at Essek over the Austrians, and 
the ravages of Barbarossa rendered the emperor more pa- 
cific. Francis I was content with having conquered Pied- 
mont, so through the mediation of the Pope, he signed at 
Nice, a truce of ten years with his rival (1538). The two 
sovereigns appeared reconciled. In 1540, Ghent revolted, 
and Francis offered Charles a free x^ass through France on 
his way to subjugate it. The emperor accepted and prom- 
ised to restore Milan. Hardly had he arrived in Flanders 
when he retracted his promise, and furthermore caused the 
murder of two French envoys who were on their way to 



A.D. 1541-1558.] FURTHER WARS IN ITALY 337 

Turkey. This assassination and the failure of Charles at 
Algiers deQided Francis I to again take up arms. His fleet, 
united to that of Barbarossa, captured Nice, and the Duke 
of Enghien won the splendid victory of Cerisoles (1544). 
But in the north Charles V penetrated as far as Chateau 
Thierry, fifteen leagues from Paris, and his ally, the king of 
England, laid siege to Boulogne. Famine and disease stopped 
the Imperialists who signed the peace of Crespy (1544) on 
terms of mutual restitution. Henry VIII continued the 
war and took Boulogne, but gave it back on payment of 
2,000,000 francs at the treaty of Ardres (1546). 

Abdication of Charles V (1556). — Francis died in 1547. 
His death left Charles V apparently free to restore the 
empire of Charlemagne. Souleiman was at that time chiefly 
absorbed in wars in Asia against the Persians, and the 
Hungarians seemed capable of checking the Ottomans on 
the Danube. The Protestants already formed a powerful 
body in Germany, which the emperor wished to crush be- 
fore France could send them support. He defeated them 
at Muhlberg (1547) through the treachery of Maurice of 
Saxony, and dictated the Interim of Augsburg, which dis- 
pleased everybody. Henry II, the new king of France, took 
advantage of the general discontent to declare himself the 
protector of German liberties. He entered Lorraine, took 
possession of the Three Bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and Verdun 
(1551), while the Protestants surprised the emperor and 
forced him to flee to Italy. By the compromise of Passau 
Charles accorded them freedom of conscience (1552), and 
turned against France, his ancient enemy, to avenge this 
humiliation. His good fortune deserted him before Metz. 
Then weary of so many fruitless struggles, he renounced the 
crown of Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands in favor of his 
son Philip II (1556). Next he abdicated the imperial 
throne in favor of his brother Archduke Ferdinand, already 
king of the Komans. From that day forth the house of 
Austria separated into two branches, and the vast dominion 
of Charles V was henceforth divided (1556). 

Continuation of the Strug^gle between the Houses of France 
and Austria (1558-1559). — Thus the integrity of France 
had not been broken, and Charles V had failed in realizing 
his dream of a universal monarchy. Germany also pre- 
served her liberties, or in other words her divisions. Italy 
alone found herself in the hands of the Spaniards, who were 



338 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1558-1559. 

quartered at Naples and Milan. An energetic Pope, Paul 
IV, undertook to expel them. He counted upon the aid of 
Prance for success. So the war continued. One Prench 
army was sent towards the Netherlands and another towards 
Italy. They intended to leave to Philip nothing but Spain. 

The Duke of Gruise was already marching upon Naples 
when he was recalled to France by the defeat of Saint 
Quentin. The bold captain struck a great blow. Unex- 
pectedly in the dead of winter he besieged Calais and 
captured it in a week (1558). The Spaniards were still 
on the Somme, and a defeat of the Marshal of Thermes at 
Gravelines destroyed all hope of their prompt expulsion. 
Moreover Italy was at their mercy, and the plan of the Pope 
became impossible of execution. Henry negotiated the 
treaty of Chateau Cambresis by which France restored to 
the Duke of Savoy his states minus a few cities, Siena to 
the Medici, and Corsica to the Genoese ; but she retained the 
Three Bishoprics, and on payment of 500,000 crowns, the 
city of Calais (1559). 

Thus the Spanish domination was strengthened in north- 
ern and southern Italy. The still existing Italian princes 
possessed hardly more than the shadow of independence. The 
French kings had thrown France into these wars, hoping to 
conquer Naples and Milan, but instead had given them to 
Spain. Their royal rivalries had engrossed the attention 
and the forces of the sovereigns for forty years. Mean- 
while the Eeformation had spread over half of Europe. 
The peace of Chateau Cambresis ended the Italian wars 
only to permit the kings of France and Spain to begin, 
with the aid of the Pope and the Catholic clergy, the 
religious wars. 



A.D. 1556.1 RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 339 



XII 

THE RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 
(1559-1598) 

Philip II. — The rehabilitated Church could now make 
war with arguments. She required also an arm wherewith 
to do battle with the sword. For this end she possessed, in 
the sixteenth century, Philip II, the son of Charles V and 
his successor in Spain, and in the seventeenth the heir of 
his German possessions, Ferdinand of Austria. 

Philip II, whom the Protestants call the Demon of the 
South, was master of Sicily, Sardinia, Naples and Milan in 
Italy ; of Flanders, Artois, Franche-Comte, Koussillon in 
France ; of the Netherlands at the mouth of the Scheldt, 
Meuse and Khine ; of Tunis Oran, Cape Verd and the 
Canary Isles in Africa; of Mexico, Peru, Chili and the 
Antilles in America; and lastly of the Philippine Islands in 
Oceanica. He had seaports without nnmber, a powerful 
fleet, the best disciplined troops and the most skilful 
generals in Europe, and the inexhaustible treasures of the 
New World. He increased this domination still further in 
1581 by the acquisition of Portugal and her immense co- 
lonial empire. The sun never set upon his states. It was a 
common saying then, "When Spain moves, the earth 
trembles." 

All this power did not satisfy his ambition. As a Cath- 
olic he hated the Protestants ; as an absolute king he feared 
them. Both from self-interest and conviction he declared 
himself the armed leader of Catholicism, which was able 
out of gratitude, to raise him to the supreme power in 
Western Europe. This was the thought of his whole life. 
He recoiled before no means which might crush the hostile 
principle. To this struggle he consecrated rare talents. 
Therein he expended all his military forces. He lavished 
all his gold to foment assassination in Holland, conspiracy 
in England and civil war in France. We shall see with 
what success. 



340 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1559. 

Character of This Period- — When the French and Span- 
ish kings signed the peace of Chateau Cambresis (1559), 
they purposed to introduce into their government the new 
spirit which animated the Church, and to wage a pitiless 
war against heresy. The one undertook to stifle the Ref- 
ormation in France ; the other sought to i^revent its birth 
in Italy and Spain and to crush it in the Netherlands and 
England. When Henry II died, his three sons, the last of 
the Valois, carried on his plans. At first they required 
only the advice of Spain. The oldest, Francis II, reigned 
less than a year and a half (1559-1560). The second, 
Charles IX, died at the age of twenty-four (1574). The 
third, Henry III (1574-1589), who alone attained full 
manhood, always remained in a sort of minority, whence he 
emerged only in fits of passion. Hence this Valois line was 
incapable of conducting in France the great battle of creeds. 

But at their side or confronting them, there were per- 
sons more strongly tempered for good or ill. Such were 
Catherine de Medici, their mother, unscrupulous and astute ; 
the G-uises, uncles of Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, who 
organized the Catholics into a party when they saw the 
Protestants forming a faction around their rivals, the 
princes of the house of Bourbon; the general Conde; 
Coligny, who, from a moral point of view, was the superior 
of them all; in the Netherlands, AVilliam the Silent, the 
Prince of Orange ; in England Elizabeth, daughter of Henry 
VIII, who, during the reign of her sister Mary, was the 
hope of the English Protestants. 

In the war, many diverging interests were about to en- 
gage. The Dutch desired liberty, England her indepen- 
dence, the cities of France their ancient communal rights, 
and provincial feudalism its former privileges. But the 
religious form, which was that of the times, covered all. 
When we survey the whole from the heights of the Vatican 
or the Escurial, we recognize the fact that the chief aim 
pursued in Western Europe during the second half of the 
sixteenth century was the triumph of the Church, as con- 
stituted by the Council of Trent, and the triumph of the 
king of Spain, her military chief. 

France the Principal Battlefield of the Two Parties. The 
First War (1562-1563). — The contract, entered into by the 
two kings at Chateau Cambresis, had immediately been put 
into execution. In France, Anne Dubourg was burned at 



A.D. 1559-1563.] RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 341 

the stake, and the edict of Ecouen threatened the Protes- 
tants with death. In Spain Philip II had autos-da-fe 
celebrated in his presence, in order to show the provincial 
governors that they must grant no mercy to heretics. At 
Naples and Milan all suspected persons perished. Even 
the archbishop of Toledo was persecuted for his opinions. 
Sanguinary edicts spread the terror to the Netherlands, 
where the creation of new bishoprics notified the population 
of a stricter surveillance. This declaration of war against 
heresy was answered as early as 1559, by acts of the Eng- 
lish Parliament, which recognized Elizabeth as the supreme 
head of the Anglican Church ; by the secularization of all 
the bishoprics of Brandenburg ; and by the suppression of 
the religious and military Order of the Sword Bearers of 
Livonia. Thus did the Eeformation consolidate and extend 
from the Irish Sea to the recesses of the Baltic, despite the 
thunders of Rome and the threats of two mighty kings. 

It even tried to win France by the plot of Amboise, 
which came near success, and which the Guises defeated by 
shedding rivers of blood (1560). In vain did a great magis- 
trate, L'Hopital, preach moderation and tolerance to those 
furious men who listened only to their passions. The 
massacre of Protestants at Vassy (1562) inaugurated a war 
which only ended thirty-six years later. During this time 
France was the principal battlefield of the two parties. 
The atrocious character of the war was evident from the 
very beginning of hostilities. As soon as Philip II learned 
that the sword had been drawn, he sent to the south, to 
Montluc, " the Catholic butcher," 3000 of his best soldiers 
and directed others from the Netherlands upon Paris. 
At the same time the German Protestants gave 7000 men to 
Conde, to whom Elizabeth also despatched reenforcements 
and money. The defeat of this prince at Dreux and the 
death of the Duke of Guise, who was assassinated before 
Orleans, restored influence to the advocates of peace. Cath- 
erine de Medici granted to the Protestants the edict of 
Amboise (1563). Its principal clauses will be found again 
in the last edict of pacification, that of Nantes, a proof of 
the uselessness of those thirty-six years of murder, ravage 
and conflagration. 

Success of Catholicism in the Netherlands and in France 
(1564-1568). The Blood Tribunal (1567). — The edict of 
Amboise irritated Spain and Eome. Pius V, who had been 



342 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1563-1570. 

graud inquisitor before he became Pope, reproached Cath- 
erine for her weakness. During a journey which she made 
in the south Philip II sent to meet her at Bayonne the 
most pitiless of his lieutenants, the Duke of Alva, who in- 
formed the queen of the policy of his master, which con- 
sisted in ridding himself of hostile leaders by assassination. 
This doubtless was the germ whence the subsequent mas- 
sacre of Saint Bartholomew developed. The Jesuits were 
spreading everywhere and were everywhere, preparing the 
way for a mortal combat with heresy. This time it was in 
the Netherlands that the fire broke out and thence spread 
to France. 

The Spaniards poured into the Netherlands. They intro- 
duced the despotic spirit among a people whose municipal 
life had always been very strong. The publication of the 
decrees of the Council of Trent was the signal for insurrec- 
tion. The nobles, threatened with the loss of their religious 
and political liberty, bound themselves by the Compromise 
of Breda (1546) to lend each other mutual aid in obtaining 
the redress of their grievances. The people among whom 
the Keformation had already made great progress flung 
themselves with the blind fury of mobs upon the churches, 
broke the images of the saints, overthrew the altars and 
burned the pulpits. Shocked at these demagogical excesses 
the nobles held aloof, and the revolt, thus isolated, calmed 
down at once. But Philip decided to make an example. 
He sent to the Low Countries the Duke of Alva, who in- 
stituted the Tribunal of Blood. Eighteen thousand persons 
perished on the scaffold, among whom were the counts 
Horn and Egmont. Thirty thousand persons were stripped 
of their property, 100,000 emigrated, and a ruinous tax 
destroyed the fortunes of those who remained. 

These events found their echo in France, where the second 
civil war broke out (1567), marked by the battle of Saint 
Denis. Then came the third civil war (1568), where Italians 
hired by Pius V, Spaniards despatched by the Duke of Alva, 
and Catholic Germans fought against the Protestants of all 
countries. At Jarnac Conde was slain, and at Moncontour 
Coligny was defeated. 

Thus the victory remained with the Catholics. In France, 
Catherine resolved to sign the Peace of Saint Germain (1570) 
that she might gain time to devise "something else." In 
the Netherlands the Catholic triumph was apparently com- 



A.D. 1570-1571.] RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 343 

plete, and preparations were carried on for an invasion of 
England, where since 1563 Spanish gold had been cleverly 
employed to keep up the agitation. In Spain every attempt 
to escape from religious and political tyranny was merci- 
lessly repressed. The wrath of the king hung over all. He 
drove his son to suicide, his wife to death and the Moors of 
the Alpujarras to revolt. He established the Inquisition in 
the Spanish colonies, and from one end to the other of his 
dominions silence and terror reigned. Daring this period 
Catholicism suffered only one serious check, when the errors 
and the fall of Mary Stuart (1568) assured the victory in 
Scotland to the followers of the Reformation. 

Dispersion of the Forces of Spain. Victory of Lepanto 
(1571). — Meanwhile the forces of Spain were being dis- 
persed in all directions. Much money was expended and 
many soldiers were employed. In Andalusia they fought 
the Moors who supported by England resisted until 1571. 
On the Mediterranean they fought the Ottomans, whose 
progress continued and who conquered Cyprus in 1570. In 
the Netherlands they fought the Gueux or " beggars," who 
along the coast and at the mouth of the rivers intercepted 
the Spanish vessels, prevented the provisioning of the strong- 
holds and thus inspired uneasiness in one party and hope in 
the other. At Naples, at Milan, on the coast of Africa, in 
the colonies, in Mexico, in Peru, everywhere, strong garri- 
sons were required and Spain drained herself of men to 
maintain her domination of the world. 

The only honorable war carried on was that against the 
Ottomans, but it was ruinous. Thus in 1558 a squadron and 
army sent against Tlemcen Avere destroyed. In the follow- 
ing year 15,000 soldiers on 200 vessels tried to capture 
Tripoli and suffered a frightful disaster. Four j^ears later, 
the fleet of Naples was overwhelmed by a tempest. In 
1565 Souleiman, who had already wrested Ehodes from the 
Knights, besieged them in Malta, but was repulsed by their 
Grand Master, La Valette. These efforts of the Ottomans 
to render themselves masters of the whole Mediterranean 
forced Philip II to direct a large proportion of his resources 
against them. After the loss of Cyprus he got together 300 
ships manned by 80,000 soldiers and rowers, and his natural 
brother, Don Juan of Austria, won the famous but useless 
victory of Lepanto (1571). " When we take a kingdom from 
you," said Sultan Selim to the Venetian ambassador, " we 



344 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1567-1572. 

deprive you of an arm. When you disperse our fleet, you 
merely shave our beard, which does not hinder its growing 
again." In fact he equipped immediately 250 vessels. 

Catholic Conspiracies in England and in France. — Such 
expenditure of men and money rendered Philip unable to 
interfere in the affairs of France and England except by 
plots. The victory of Lepanto encouraged the Catholics. 
The Duke of Norfolk vainly tried to overthrow Elizabeth 
and enthrone Mary Stuart, while Catherine de Medici 
sought to annihilate the Calvinist party by the massacre of 
Saint Bartholomew. 

When Darnley, the husband of Mary Stuart, was mur- 
dered by the Earl of Bothwell (1567) and the queen married 
the assassin, all Scotland rose against her. Mary took ref- 
uge with Elizabeth, who treated her as a prisoner (1568). 
The expiation of such injustice began almost immediately, 
and England thenceforth was constantly agitated by Catho- 
lic plots to deliver the captive. Philip pensioned the Eng- 
lish Catholics, who had fled to the continent. He threw 
open to their priests the seminaries of Flanders, so as to 
hold the British coast under the perpetual menace of an 
invasion more formidable than that of "an army of soldiers. 
In 1569 the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth. Thereupon 
many lords got together a little army, which had as its 
standard a picture of Jesus Christ with liis five bleeding 
wounds. In the following year a fresh rebellion was re- 
pressed like the first. A third unsuccessful attempt was 
made in 1572 by the Duke of Norfolk, to whom Mary Stuart 
had promised her hand, but who was defeated and mounted 
the scaffold. 

Thus in England Protestantism made a victorious de- 
fence. In France it seemed on the point of perishing. 
After the peace of Saint Germain Admiral Coligny gained 
great influence over the mind of the king, the young Charles 
IX. He wished to lead the French Protestants against the 
Spaniards in the Netherlands, and thus by one stroke end 
the civil wars in France, and commence a national war 
against the foreigner. The execution of this sagacious 
plan was in preparation, when a professional assassin in 
the pay of the house of Guise severely wounded the ad- 
miral. The king was finally persuaded to order a general 
massacre of the Protestants on Saint Bartholomew's day, 
August 24, 1572. The unsuspecting victims were butchered 



A.D. 1572-1587.] RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 345 

by thousands. For this abominable crime the king received 
warm congratulations from the courts of Rome and Spain. 
" Be fully assured," Philip II wrote, " that in furthering 
thus the affairs of God, you are furthering your own still 
more." This is the countersign of that atrocious and odious 
policy which masked political ambition under the guise of 
piety. 

Progress of Protestantism (1572-1587). — Protestantism, 
mutilated and bleeding, rose up stronger than ever. De- 
spite the loss of its most experienced captains and most 
valiant soldiers, the Calvinist party rushed to arms after 
the massacre of Saint Bartholomew and at the peace of 
La Rochelle enforced the recognition of its right to liberty 
of conscience. That political crime of August 24 was 
therefore as always happens useless. When Henry III, 
a man of distinguished ability, but of corrupt heart, suc- 
ceeded Charles IX in 1574, he found himself face to face 
with three parties which he was incapable of controlling : 
the politicians, headed by his youngest brother, Franqois 
d'AleiiQon; the Calvinist, who recognized as their leader 
Henry of Beam, king of Navarre; and the enthusiastic 
Catholics, whom Henry of Guise organized into the faction 
of the league, and who opposed both the king and the 
Huguenots. Unimportant wars and treaties carry us to the 
year 1584, when the Duke of AleuQon died. As Henry III 
had no son, Henry of Navarre, the leader of the Protes- 
tants, became heir presumptive to the crown. In the war of 
the three Henrys he consecrated his rights by the brilliant 
victory of Coutras (1587). Thus it seemed that the re- 
ligious wars in France were on the point of elevating a 
heretic to the throne of Saint Louis, in spite of the excom- 
munication of the Pope, who had declared Henry of Na- 
varre unworthy to succeed to the crown. 

In the Netherlands, there was likewise Protestant suc- 
cess. After having long carried on a piratical war which 
effected nothing, the Gueux undertook war on land which 
might lead to some result. In 1572 they seized Briel, and 
the two provinces of Holland and Zealand immediately 
took up arms. 

Supported by the Protestants of Germany. England and 
France, aided by the nature of their country intersected by 
canals, above all commanded by William of Nassau, Prince 
of Orange, who was surnamed the Silent despite his elo- 



346 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1576-1585. 

quence and who understood quite as well as Coligny, his 
father-in-law, how to extort advantage even from reverses, 
the insurgents defended themselves with success. Violence 
having failed, Philip wished to try mildness and replaced 
the Duke of Alva. But the army, left without pay and 
without provisions, sacked the principal cities. The general 
irritation gave rise to the confederation of Ghent (1576), 
which united for a time all the Netherlands against the 
Spanish rule. 

Unfortunately this union could not long be maintained 
between the ten AValloon provinces, or modern Belgium, 
which were manufacturing and Catholic, and the seven 
Batavian provinces, or modern Holland, which were com- 
mercial and Calvinistic. Opposition of interests and beliefs 
was bound to bring about opposition of political views. In 
1579 in fact the Walloons, by the treaty of Msestricht, 
recognized Philip II as their king. On the other hand the 
northern provinces made a closer union at Utrecht, and con- 
stituted themselves a republic, with William of Orange as 
stadtholder or governor general. Two years later the States 
General of The Hague, the federal capital of the United 
Provinces, solemnly separated themselves from the crown 
of Spain, and declared that Philip II had forfeited all 
authority in the Netherlands. 

The king set a price on the head of William the Silent. 
A rascal, who wished to earn this reward, murdered the 
stadtholder (1584), but the liberty of the United Provinces 
no longer hung upon the life of one man. The Dutch 
understood how to defend their independence, even against 
the skilful Farnese Duke of Parma. They were also aided 
by England, which in 1585 sent them 6000 men, and by 
France, whither the duke was twice obliged to go to the 
succor of the League, and where in his second journey he 
died. Thus the war undertaken by the Catholics in the 
Netherlands resulted in the establishment of a new people 
among the nations. 

England and Spain had not yet grappled in hand to hand 
combat. But Elizabeth was sending to all the enemies of 
Philip II arms, soldiers and money, and by means of bold 
corsairs was carrying on a disastrous war against Spanish 
commerce. Drake in 1577 pillaged the cities on the coast 
of Chili and Peru, captured many ships, and after making 
the circuit of the globe returned at the end of three years 



A. D. 1585-1589.] BELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 347 

with immense booty. Cavendish in 1585 devastated the 
Spanish establishments for tlie second time, while the Dutch 
laid waste those of Portugal, which had become a province 
of Spain. The king could not revenge himself, because his 
two enemies then had no trading posts or commerce, and 
there were no vulnerable points outside their territory where 
he could strike them. Thus against Elizabeth he saw no 
weapon but conspiracy. The cruel situation created for 
English Catholics by the queen rendered this easy. In one 
year 200 persons were beheaded, for the Protestants prac- 
tised toleration no more than their adversaries, and on both 
sides they defended heaven by torture or assassination. A 
final attempt to kill the queen of England decided her to 
send Mary Stuart to the scaffold (1587). With the head 
of the niece of the Guises fell all the hopes of a Catholic 
restoration in Great Britain. 

Defeat of Spain and of Ultramontanism (1588-1598). — 
The Ultramontane party, vanquished in the Netherlands 
and in England and menaced in France, resolved upon a 
supreme effort. As early as 1584 the Guises had treated 
with Philip II and infused fresh life into the League. He 
himself exhausted all the resources of his states to organize 
an army and a fleet strong enough to bring back the Nether- 
lands and England, and after them France, to the Catholic 
faith, and subject them to the law of Spain. On June 3, 
1588, the invincible Armada issued from the Tagus. It 
was to land in England an army of 50,000 men. Storms 
and the English and Flemish sailors with their fire-ships 
got the better of this arrogant expedition. The plan, over 
which Philip II had toiled for five years and upon which 
he had meditated for eighteen, was utterly shipwrecked 
in the space of a few days. 

At the moment when Philip believed that his Armada 
was carrying him back victorious to London, Guise, his best 
ally, was making a triumphal entry into Paris, whence the 
king escaped as a fugitive. But the Spanish fleet once 
destroyed, Henry III began to hope again. He enticed 
Henry of Guise to Blois, where he had him murdered. 
Then joining the heretic king of Navarre, he returned to 
lay siege to his capital. A monk assassinated him in his 
camp (1589). 

The Huguenot Henry of Navarre was immediately pro- 
claimed king of France as Henry IV. Though many Cath- 



348 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1589-1598. 

olics abandoned him, 7000 English, 10,000 Dutch and 12,000 
Germans came to his help, which permitted him to hold his 
own against the Spaniards and Italians who had hastened 
to the. aid of the League. The battles of Arques and of 
Ivry confirmed his fortune and his renown (1590). Twice 
the Duke of Parma endeavored to capture Paris and Rouen 
(1591). But demagogic excesses, the general lassitude, and 
the imprudence of Philip II, who demanded of the States 
General of 1593 the crown of Prance for his daughter Isa- 
bella, the promised bride of an Austrian archduke, rallied 
the politicians around Henry IV. Soon afterward he ab- 
jured Protestantism at Saint Denis, " because Paris was well 
worth a mass," and was generally accepted as king (1593). 

The League had no longer any reason to exist. It re- 
tarded but could not prevent the triumph of the Bearnese. 
Brissac sold him Paris when he expelled the Spanish garri- 
son. A few months later papal absolution consecrated his 
rights even in the eyes of the leaguers. The chiefs were 
then compelled to acknowledge him. The Duke of Guise 
yielded, as did Villars, Brancas and Mayenne, but all made 
him pay for their submission. A brief war with Spain, 
signalized by the battle of Fontaine Prangaise and the siege 
of Amiens, brought about the peace of Vervins, which rees- 
tablished the boundaries of the two kingdoms, on the foot- 
ing of the treaty of Chateau Cambresis. Three weeks 
earlier Henry IV had assured peace at home by signing 
the edict of Nantes, which guaranteed the Protestants lib- 
erty of conscience, freedom of worship in their castles and 
in a great number of cities, equal representation in the par- 
liaments of the south, and places of surety. Lastly, they 
were accorded the right of assembling by deputies, every 
three years, to present their complaints to the government 
(1598). Thus they constituted a state within the state. 



A.D. 1598.1 RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 349 



XIII 

RESULTS OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN 
EUROPE 

Decline and Ruin of Spain. — There is no greater moral 
lesson in history than that afforded by the reign of Philip 
II. That man, for the sake of rnling the human will and 
conscience, devoted to his ambition apparently inexhausti- 
ble resources, and an energy that flinched at nothing. 
Everything seemed legitimate to his mind, devoured by a 
double fanaticism, at once political and religious. In the 
task which the Pope and the king pursued in common, the 
Church was far more the instrument than the end, for Cath- 
olic restoration was to result in the consolidation of Spanish 
supremacy. And when to attain his object Philip II had 
shed torrents of blood, he found that he had slain neither 
heresy nor popular liberty, but had destroyed Spain. 
Everything was perishing in the peninsula. Commerce 
and industry, which had been cruelly attacked by the ex- 
pulsion of the Jews and Moors, were still further affected 
by the monopolies which the government set up. Agricul- 
ture was succumbing under the periodical ravages of the 
flocks of the Mesta. The population, decimated by war 
and emigration, was also diminished by the multiplication 
of convents. For all these reasons labor decreased and the 
country was forced to purchase abroad what it could no 
longer produce. Thus the gold of America traversed Spain 
witliout rendering it fruitful and flowed rapidly towards 
the productive nations. This explains the astonishing fact 
that the possessor of the richest deposits of metals in the 
world was twice obliged (1575 and 1596) to suspend pay- 
ment, and that he left a debt of over $200,000,000. Men 
had not yet learned that real wealth does not exist in the 
gold which represents it, but in the labor which creates it. 

Philip II died in 1598, four months after the edict of 
Nantes and the treaty of Vervins. He had witnessed the 
crumbling of all his plans and the strengthening of his two 



350 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1598. 

great adversaries, Henry IV and Elizabeth, on the thrones 
which they had gloriously reconquered or preserved. A 
century later the Marquis de Torcy said : " Spain is a .body 
without a soul." We have seen that Italy shared the fate 
of Spain. 

Prosperity of England and Holland. — The perils from 
internal conspiracies and foreign war, which England had 
just escaped, permitted Elizabeth to finish the work of the 
Tudors by constituting the most absolute royalty which ever 
existed in the land. As head of the Church she persecuted 
the ISTon-Conformists with cruelty. In order that she might 
more effectively reach their adversaries, the Anglicans 
delivered over to her the public liberties. The jury was 
nearly suppressed. In Parliament not a voice dared raise 
itself against the ministers. " In the trials for high treason 
which were instituted on the slightest pretext, the courts 
of justice differed little from regular caverns of assassins." 
This is what the War of the Roses, the Reformation and 
religious hatreds had made of free England. Beneath this 
despotism a revolution was in secret preparation, which was 
to break out against the second successor of Elizabeth. 

At least she had developed all the sources of national 
wealth for her country by favoring commerce and the 
marine; by the creation of the Exchange in London; by 
the colonization of Virginia, whence were brought the 
potato and tobacco; by the immigration into England of 
the Flemish who fled from Spanish tyranny, and caused 
their adopted country to profit by their industrial and com- 
mercial skill. Under Queen Elizabeth lived one of the 
greatest dramatic poets of the world, Shakespeare, and a 
philosopher. Bacon, who brought about a salutary revolution 
in the sciences by effecting the final adoption of the experi- 
mental method. 

The Dutch, while defending against Philip II their Ifklf- 
submerged land, had already become the carriers of the 
ocean and the harvesters of the sea. They bartered their 
tons of herrings for tons of gold, by provisioning with salted 
viands the Catholic countries where the practice of fasting 
rendered such food a necessity. In a single year the fisher- 
men turned into the treasury 5,000,000 florins as their share 
of the taxes. Moreover they carried on an enormous com- 
mission trade, taking merchandise where it was cheap and 
transporting it where it was needed. Philip II closed 



A.D. 1598-1G08.] RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 351 

Lisbon to them. Therefore they sought their Oriental 
wares at the places of production, and by the conquest 
of the Moluccas laid the foundations of a colonial empire 
which the great East India Company, organized in 1602, 
developed and strengthened. The two provinces of Holland 
and Zealand alone possessed 70,000 sailors, through whose 
hands the entire commerce of Spain and Portugal was des- 
tined to pass. 

Keorganization of France by Henry IV (1598-1610). — 
Henry IV, by the treaty of Vervins and the edict of Nantes, 
gave France peace at home and abroad. The country's 
wounds remained to be healed. The finances were in the 
most deplorable state. The public debt amounted perhaps 
to 1,300,000,000 francs and the income was barely 30,000,000 
a year. Henry IV chose for superintendent of the linances 
the soldier Sully, the faithful comrade of his fortunes. This 
energetic and devoted minister made the revenue farmers dis- 
gorge. He himself verified the product of the imposts and 
fixed them at only a proper amount. In less than a dozen 
years, although the taxes had been reduced by 4,000,000, 
the public service was assured, 147,000,000 of debts had 
been paid, 8,000,000 worth of domains redeemed, and a sur- 
plus of 20,000,000 placed in reserve in the vaults of the 
Bastile. 

" Tillage and pasturage," said Sully, '' are the two breasts 
which nourish France. They are the real mines and treas- 
ures of Peru." Therefore he decreed the draining of 
marshes, prohibited the destruction of the forests and per- 
mitted the free exportation of grain. Tax collectors were 
forbidden to seize the beasts or instruments of tillage. And 
lastly, Olivier de Serres, a great scientific agriculturist, popu- 
larized by his works the true maxims of rural culture and 
economy. Sully despised manufactures, but the king, who 
was less exclusive, had 50,000 mulberry trees planted and 
revived the factories of Lyons, Nimes and Tours, which 
Francis I had established. He founded factories for glass 
and pottery at Nevers and Paris, concluded treaties of com- 
merce with Holland and England, restored to France the 
monopoly of commerce in the East, and had Champlain 
build the city of Quebec in Canada (1608). 

Henry IV longed to restore peace to Europe as he had 
restored it to France. He conceived the plan of a grand 
confederation of European states, with a diet to settle in- 



352 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1610. 

ternational differences. With this aim in view, he was 
about to begin a war with Austria and had already taken 
the field with 40,000 men, to determine the succession of 
Cleves and Juliers, when the dagger of Ravaillac saved 
Austria (1610). 

Such were the results of the formidable enterprise di- 
rected by the papacy and Spain against the modern spirit 
which was awakening. The independence of Europe was 
saved. Toleration had won its first victory and liberty of 
the mind could begin. A new state, the United Provinces, 
was about to treat on terms of equality with the most glori- 
ous kings. An ancient state, England, had received the 
revelation of her future greatness. France was placed by a 
great prince at the head of Europe. Spain, in conclusion, 
fell from the hands of Philip II, exhausted and agonizing; 
and the Eoman Inquisition made of Italy for three cen- 
turies the land of the dead. 



A.D. 1555-1580.] RELIGIOUS WARS m CENTRAL EUROPE 353 



XIV 

THE RELIGIOUS WARS IN CENTRAL EUROPE, OR THE 
THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

(1618-1648) 

Preliminaries of the Thirty Years' War (1555-1618). — 
The struggle of ultramontanism against the Reformation, 
after the Catholic restoration effected by the Council of 
Trent and the papacy, broke out first in Western Europe. 
Vanquished in France, the Netherlands, England and Scot- 
land, and constrained to submit to the edict of toleration 
proclaimed at Nantes in 1598, ultramontanism attempted 
twenty years later to regain Germany and the countries of 
the North. The first war had lasted thirty-six years and 
covered Avith ruins all the lands situated between the 
Pyrenees and the North Sea. The second lasted thirty 
years (1618-1648) and extended its ravages from the Dan- 
ube to the Scheldt, from the shores of the Po to those of 
the Baltic, destroying cities, ruining nations, decimating 
the population and bringing back barbarism. Men em- 
ployed two-thirds of a century in murdering each other in 
the name of the God of charity and love. 

When Charles V, fallen from the height of his hopes, 
resolved to abdicate, he first promulgated the peace of 
Augsburg, This could be only a truce, because it contained 
an ecclesiastical reservation which forbade any holder of 
a benefice on becoming a Protestant to retain any church 
property which he had formerly held. Moreover Luther- 
anism had split up into a multitude of sects which inter- 
preted differently the question of grace. The universities 
of Jena, Wittenberg and Leipzig excommunicated each 
other in turn, and in the midst of this confusion the Duke 
of Saxony, a temporal sovereign, arrogated the right of 
dictating a creed and of expelling or imprisoning all 
infringers thereof. In 1580 the followers of the Reforma- 
2a 



354 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1580-1618. 

tioii in Saxony and Brandenburg signed a " formula of 
concord," to which the three electors and a great number 
of princes and cities gave their adhesion, but which other 
states of northern Germany rejected. In conclusion, the 
separation was so profound between the Lutherans and the 
Calvinists, that the former allowed the Catholics to deprive 
of his electorate Gebhard von Truchsess, archbishop of 
Cologne, who had become a Calvinist (1583). These 
quarrels permitted the Catholics to regain ground, thanks 
to the cleverness of the Jesuits, who from Bavaria, their 
headquarters in Germany, extended their action to a dis- 
tance. They caused the Protestants of Aix-la-Chapelle to 
be expelled, the republic of Donauwerth to be degraded from 
its rank as an imperial city, and prevented a reformer from 
becoming bishop of Strasburg. Thus the plan of a Catholic 
restoration was being carried out in Germany. 

The uneasy Protestants drew together and formed the 
Evangelical Union (1608). To this their adversaries op- 
posed the Catholic League, the direction of which Austria 
under feeble princes abandoned to Maximilian, Duke of 
Bavaria. 

The succession to Cleves, Berg and Juliers (1609) came 
near setting Europe aflame. Two Protestant heirs pre- 
sented themselves, the Duke of ISTeuburg and the Elector of 
Brandenburg. When the emperor sequestered the duchies, 
the Protestants complained and Henry IV was about to 
uphold them when he died by assassination (1610). The con- 
tention was prolonged. Neuburg became Catholic ; Bran- 
denburg, Calvinist. The Spaniards entered the country from 
one side and the Dutch from the other. At that moment 
the policy of Austria was changed by the accession of 
Ferdinand II, an energetic prince, who blew up with gun- 
powder the heretical churches in his states and on one 
-occasion burned 10,000 Bibles. 

Palatine Period (1618-1625). — The Bohemians, whose 
privileges he had violated, rose in revolt and chose 
Frederick, the elector palatine, son-in-law of the king of 
England, as their king (1618). Thus, just a century after 
the outbreak of the Reformation, began a struggle which 
repeated in Central Europe what we have already seen 
in the west ; namely, a political war under the mask 
of a war for religion. Ferdinand II in fact was deter- 
mined to make ultrarnontanism triumph, but like Philip II, 



A.D. 1018-ir>2i).] RELIGIOUS WARS IN CENTRAL EUROPE 355 

he intended it to redound to his personal profit and to 
render Germany an Austrian province. 

Frederick was a Calvinist. Hence the Lutherans de- 
serted him, while the Spaniards on the contrary made 
common cause with the Austrians and their allies. When 
the battle of White Mountain, won by the forces of the 
League, delivered Bohemia to Ferdinand II, he committed 
abominable cruelties. Two centuries later the country still 
showed the effects of this sanguinary restoration of 
Catholicism. 

The proscribed Bohemians were formed into an army by 
Count von Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick. They 
long held in check the Bavarian General Tilly and the 
Spaniards of the Netherlands who had come to his help. 

Danish Period (1625-1629). — The Protestant princes had 
time to penetrate the designs of Ferdinand and call in the 
kings of the North, whom the defeat of the German 
Reformers would leave exposed to the blows of Austria. 
Christian IV, king of Denmark, was the first to enter the 
lists (1625) and occupied the country between the Elbe and 
the Weser. AVhile in that direction he was arresting the 
forces of the Catholic League, in his rear an adventurer 
called AVallenstein was bringing to the emperor, who had 
no army, 50,000 men and later 100,000, who lived by pil- 
lage and whose leader reserved for himself the absolute 
command. Routed by Tilly at Lutter, and threatened by 
Wallenstein with being cut off from Holstein, the Danish 
king retreated to his peninsula and signed the peace of 
Lubeck (1629). Then northern Germany, despoiled 
by the edict of restitution and occupied by 100,000 
imperialists, bowed its head before the Austrian power. 
Wallenstein said openly "that no more princes or elec- 
tors were needed in Germany ; that everything there 
ought to be subject to a single king, as in France and 
Spain." Thus what Prussia has done in our day, Austria 
believed herself on the point of accomplishing. 

Fortunately, the French Cardinal Richelieu thwarted this 
plan. He sent secret emissaries to arouse the jealousy and 
the courage of the princes. At the Diet of Ratisbon, he 
persuaded them to demand the recall of Wallenstein, who 
was crushing Germany with his requisitions and to refuse 
the title of King of the Romans to the son of Ferdinand II. 
At the same time, he induced Poland and Sweden to con- 



356 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1630-1640. 

elude a peace, so that the king of the latter, already so re- 
nowned under the name of Gustavus Adolphus, might be 
free to hasten to the succor of the Keformers. 

Swedish Period (1630-1635).— That great captain took 
alarm when he saw Catholicism and the Austrians obtaining 
a foothold on the shores of the Baltic. He disembarked in 
Pomerania (1630) with 16,000 admirably disciplined men. 
France could not join him in offensive alliance. But at 
least she promised him an annual subsidy of 400,000 
crowns. When he had conquered Pomerania, he made his 
way into Saxony, defeated Tilly at Leipzig (1631), and ex- 
pelled all the Catholic or Spanish garrisons from Franconia, 
Suabia, the Upper Rhine and the Palatinate, while the 
Elector of Saxony invaded Lusatia and Bohemia. Having 
thus separated the Imperialists and the Spaniards, he en- 
tered Bavaria and forced the passage of the Lech, where 
Tilly was slain. But the emperor had recalled Wallenstein, 
who rapidly formed another army, flung himself upon Sax- 
ony and forced Gustavus to come to its defence. The Swe- 
dish king won at Lutzen his last victory, and died in his 
triumph (1632). Skilful generals, his pupils, took his place 
at the head of the armies. The chancellor Oxenstiern suc- 
ceeded him in the council. Ferdinand made their task 
easier by assassinating Wallenstein of whose ambition he 
was afraid (1634). But that same year the defeat of Ber- 
nard of Saxe-Weimar at Nordlingen deprived Sweden of all 
her German allies except the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel ; 
and Richelieu considered it necessary to set the armies of 
France in motion at last. 

French Period (1635-1648). — At first he was unfortunate. 
The Spaniards crossed the Somme and took possession of 
Corbie. The court and Paris had a moment of terror. But 
Richelieu averted the danger, reconquered Corbie and im- 
posed victory upon his generals under pain of death. La 
Meilleraye and Chatillon captured Arras (1640). Bernard 
of Saxe-Weimar, bought by Richelieu, conquered Alsace, 
and dying shortly afterward, bequeathed his army and his 
conquest to France. D'Harcourt won three victories in 
Piedmont, which was then the ally of the Spaniards. The 
king himself marched to take possession of Perpignan, 
which is still French. In order to give Spain occupation 
at home, Richelieu encouraged revolts in Catalonia and 
Portugal. The Swedish generals Banner and Torstenson 



A.D. 1&41-1G48.] RELIGIOUS WARS IN CENTRAL EUROPE 357 

completed the French successes in the west by victories in 
Brandenburg, Silesia and Saxony. Guebriant, triumphant 
at Wolfenbuttel and at Kempen (1641-1642), was effecting 
his junction with the Swedes, so as to hurl their combined 
forces upon exhausted Austria, when E/ichelieu died (1643). 
His death emboldened the Spaniards, who invaded France. 
Conde routed them at Kocroi (1643), at Fribourg (1644), at 
Nordlingen (1645) and lastly at Lens (1648). Thus the 
conclusion of the peace of Westphalia was compelled. 



358 IIISTOIiY OF MODERX TIMES [a.d. KUS. 



XV 

RESULTS OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS IN CENTRAL 
EUROPE 

Peace of Westphalia (1648). — Negotiations for peace had 
been begun in 1641, but were not seriously undertaken until 
1644 in two cities of Westphalia. At the last moment Spain 
withdrew hoping to profit by the troubles of the Fronde, 
which were then breaking out in France, and to regain 
Oerdagne, Roussillon and Artois, which she had lost. The 
other states signed the treaty in October, 1648. 

Advantages won by the Protestants. Religious Inde- 
pendence of the German States. — Austria had tried to stifle 
the religious liberties of Germany. Since she was van- 
quished, whatever she had wished to overthrow still existed. 
The princes enjoyed full liberty of conscience. Their sub- 
jects possessed it only under many restrictions; for in each 
state one religion dominated, either Catholic, Lutheran, or 
Calvinist. Xo other religious organizations were recognized. 
These three obtained equality of rights. As to the posses- 
sion of ecclesiastical property and the exercise of worship, 
everything was restored in Germany to the condition of 
1624, except in the Palatinate, which was set back to the 
year 1618. Thus the territorial acquisitions and conver- 
sions, effected since the peace of Augsburg in 1555, were 
recognized. In order to indemnify the Protestant princes, 
many bishoprics and abbeys were secularized. It was a 
cardinal, Eichelieu, who brought about this treaty. It was 
another cardinal, Mazarin, who signed it. Two princes of 
the Church had been the instruments to defeat ultramon- 
tanism and the papacy. It was a proof that politics were 
no longer based upon creeds, and that temporal interests 
must henceforth depend solely on themselves. 

Political Independence of the German States. — When 
Wallenstein was pressing upon Germany with his immense 
army and when Ferdinand II was distributing to his kins- 
men the spoils of the princes, one might have thought that 




Cojiyright, 18»S, by T. Y. Crowtll i 







EngraveU by CoUi 



A.D. 1G48.] RELIGIOUS WARS /xV CENTRAL EUROPE 359 

the dream of Otlio the Great, of Frederick Barbarossa and 
of Charles V was being realized, and that the unity of the 
enij)ire was assured under the absolute authority of the 
emperor. France and the Swedes dispelled this dream. 
The German princes and states were assured the right of 
suffrage in the diet on questions of alliance, war, treaty 
and new laws. They were confirmed in the full and entire 
exercise of sovereignty in their territory. They had also 
the right to ally themselves with foreign powers, provided, 
as said a restriction, that it was not against the emperor or 
the empire. Thus the imperial authority was only a title' 
and Germany henceforth formed not a state, but a con- 
federation. 

For a long time Switzerland and Holland had been for- 
eign to the empire. This separation in fact was formally 
recognized. 

Acquisitions of Sweden and France. — The victors lacked 
moderation. Sweden caused such territories to be ceded 
her as placed in her hands the mouths of the three great 
German rivers, the Oder, Elbe and Weser. These were 
useless acquisitions, because she could not keep them. They 
were dangerous acquisitions, because tempting her to inter- 
fere in continental wars, whereby she was to lose her good 
fortune. France retained Pignerol in Piedmont, that is to 
say, a door open upon Italy ; also Alsace, a precious posses- 
sion, and beyond the Rhine Vieux Brisach and Philipsburg, 
where she had the right to keep a garrison. Moreover by 
forcing recognition of the right of the German states to con- 
tract alliance with foreign powers, she always had the means 
of purchasing support among those indigent princes. Thus 
the French had on the west, like the Swedes on the north, 
an offensive position. Germany, divided into four or five 
hundred states, Lutheran and Catholic, monarchical and 
republican, secular and ecclesiastical, Avas of necessity to be- 
come the theatre of every intrigue and the battle-ground of 
Europe. Such, from the same causes, her divisions and an- 
archy, had been the condition of Italy at the beginning of 
modern times. 

If the Bourbons had not inherited the ambition of the 
Hapsburgs and stirred up against themselves the same co- 
alitions, the peace of Westphalia would have constituted 
the grandeur of France and the political liberty of Europe. 



360 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1G10-1G21. 



XVI 

RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN. COMPLETION OF 
MONARCHICAL PRANCE 

(1610-1661) 

Minority of Louis XIII (1610-1617). —While the papacy, 
the chief power of the Middle Ages, was growing weaker, 
royalty, the chief power of modern times, was growing 
stronger. Richelieu had the genius to continue the work 
of Louis XI, of Francis I and of Henry TV ; but his min- 
istry was preceded by fourteen troubled years which came 
near reversing their gains. The feeble regent, Marie de 
Medici, abandoned both the foreign and domestic policy of 
Henry IV. Her favorite Ooncini alienated the nobles, who 
revolted in order to force her to purchase their submission 
by offices and pensions. Then, to disguise their covetous- 
ness as a desire for the public welfare, they exacted the 
convocation of the States G-eneral, the last which was con- 
voked before the French Revolution. At this assembly the 
Third Estate or the Commons showed a remarkable appre- 
ciation of the needs of the country. The nobility displayed 
its insulting contempt for the people, and the court its dis- 
dain for reforms. A second rebellion headed by Conde 
was appeased by bribes to the leaders. Finally Concini 
was killed and his wife, Eleanor Galigai, burned alive on 
accusation of having bewitched the queen mother by magic 
spells. 

Louis XIII and his favorite, the Duke de Luynes, gov- 
erned no better. The nobles now rebelled in behalf of the 
mother against the son. A more serious war broke out in 
1621. Incensed by the order to restore the ecclesiastical 
property which some of the reformers had seized, the Prot- 
estants revolted. They planned to found in the marshes of 
Aunis a French Holland, of which La Rochelle was to be 
the Amsterdam. De Luynes, who had appointed himself 
Constable of France, laid siege to Montauban. He failed 



A.D. 1624-1628.] RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN 361 

and was himself carried off by a malignant fever. The 
king succeeded the following year in expelling Soubise from 
the Isle of E.e and the Protestants sued for peace. The 
treaty of Montpellier confirmed the edict of Nantes, granted 
them La Eochelle and Montauban as cities of refuge, but 
forbade their holding any public meeting without the king's 
authorization. 

Richelieu humbles the Protestants and the High Nobility. 
— Richelieu was raised to the ministry (1624) by the reviv- 
ing influence of Marie de Medici. He resumed the grand 
policy of Louis XI and Henry IV. His twofold object 
was at home to destroy the power of the nobility and the 
independence of the Protestants, and abroad to humble the 
house of Austria. Like Louis XI he began too eagerly, 
but moderated his pace in time and attacked his different 
enemies in succession. Two treaties with the Protestants 
and Spain enabled him to turn all his forces against the 
nobles, whom he smote with terrible sentences. Marshal 
d'Ornano was thrown into the Bastile ; the Count de Chalais 
was beheaded as a conspirator; Bouteville, Montmorency 
and the Marquis de Beuvron were executed for duelling. 
At the same time the terrible cardinal deprived the nobles 
of the high dignities which gave them too much influence. 
The office of constable was abolished and that of grand 
admiral was brought in. 

These acts of severity made the nobles pause. Richelieu 
found himself free to end with the French Protestants who 
were upheld by England, although by marrying Henrietta 
of France to the English king, Charles I, he had flattered 
himself that he could prevent any such alliance. La Ro- 
chelle was besieged. An immense dike closed the port to the 
English fleets. After the most heroic resistance, when out 
of 30,000 inhabitants only 5000 remained, this capital of 
French Protestantism opened its gates (1628). The peace 
of Alais left to the Protestants the civil guarantees and the 
religious liberty which the edict of Nantes had given them, 
but their strongholds were dismantled. They ceased to 
form a state within the state, and the political unity of 
France was definitely reestablished. "You will see," said 
Marshal de Bassompierre, " that we shall be fools enough 
to capture La Rochelle.^' 

The nobles were fully aware that royalty, no longer dis- 
quieted by the Protestants, would so act as to rid itself of 



362 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [ a. d. 1629-1642. 

future anxiety on the score of the grandees. Richelieu in 
fact was obliged all his life to stifle their plots. No sooner 
was La Rochelle subdued than they formed about the king 
a cabal led by Marie de Medici, who did not find her former 
confessor, Richelieu, sufliciently docile. When common 
rumor reported him fallen in disgrace, a final interview 
with Louis XIII restored to him all his influence. The 
Victims of that " Day of Dupes " were Marshal de Marillac, 
beheaded for extortion, and Marie de Medici, who retired 
into exile at Brussels (1631). After the king's mother, 
the king's brother Gaston d'Orleans incited to rebellion 
the Duke de Montmorency, whom he basely abandoned, 
and who on being made prisoner at the battle of Castel- 
naudary, died on the scaffold (1632). Another civil war 
undertaken by the Count of Soissons, a member of the 
house of Conde, suddenly ended with the death of that 
prince, who was slain at the battle of La Marfee (1641). 
The final conspiracy, that of Cinq Mars, might have suc- 
ceeded, had not that favorite of Louis XIII ruined him- 
self by signing a treaty with Spain. Cinq Mars was 
executed, together with De Thou, his too faithful friend 
(1642). 

The great minister died during the following year. At 
home he had overcome every obstacle to the royal authority. 
Without equalling Sully, he had introduced some order into 
the finances. He had destroyed many feudal fortresses, 
and by the creation of intendants (1635) had diminished the 
hitherto excessive authority of the provincial governors. 
Abroad his services had been still more illustrious, as we 
have seen in the history of the Thirty Years' War. 

Mazarin and the Fronde. — On the death of Louis XIII, 
France had again to undergo the reign of a minor. 
Louis XIV was only five years of age. His mother, Anne 
of Austria, made Parliament intrust her with the regency 
contrary to the late king's will, which gave the power to 
a council. The regent confided the authority to Mazarin, 
a shrewd and supple minded Italian, obstinate rather than 
great. Sent as papal nuncio to France, he had been dis- 
tinguished by Richelieu, who caused his nomination as a 
cardinal. 

A reaction against the severe government of Richelieu 
immediately set in. Pensions, honors and privileges were 
lavished by the " Good Queen," but they did not restrain 



A.D. 16i2-lf)49.] RICHELIEU AND MAZAHIN 363 

the great lords, some of whom formed the cabal of "the 
Consequential Persons." The regent, or rather Mazarin, 
perceived the danger in time. Beaufort was sent to the 
Bastile, and Vendome, Duchess de Chevreuse, and the rest 
"to their country houses." 

The finances were in extreme disorder. Mazarin had 
neither financial instinct nor the necessary degree of self- 
sacrifice. To obtain money two unpopular edicts were 
issued. Mazarin demanded from the sovereign courts their 
salaries for four years as a loan. This time the Parliament 
flew into a rage and undertook to play the part which the 
English Parliament had just assumed as reformer of the 
state. It proposed for the royal sanction twenty-seven 
articles, which forbade the collection of taxes until they 
had been verified and registered, abolished the office of the 
intendants, and prohibited any servant of the king being 
detained in durance for more than twenty-four hours with- 
out examination. Just then Conde won the victory of Lens. 
Mazarin, emboldened by this great success, had three coun- 
cillors, Charton, Blancmesnil and Broussel, arrested during 
the Te Deum (1648). Immediately the people rose; 200 
barricades were constructed, and the court in order to gain 
time sanctioned the demands of Parliament. At that 
moment the treaty of Westphalia was being signed. 

When peace was concluded with Austria, the regent 
summoned Conde to her presence. Immediately the par- 
liament party began raising troops. They were joined by 
many of the intriguing and covetous nobles. The soul of 
the movement was Paul de Gondi, afterwards archbishop 
of Paris and later on Cardinal de Petz, who boasted of 
having studied the art of plotting in Sallust and Plutarch, 
and who had himself written the conspiracy of Fiesco. He 
flattered himself that he could force the court to appoint 
him as successor of Eichelieu by creating himself a party 
among the people, as though the people already had a part 
to play. He was a talker and made adroit use of the Duke 
of Beaufort, grandson of Henry lY, a popular man despite 
his emptiness of mind, who was called the king of the 
markets but who could not be anything more. After a 
short war in which the insurgents were constantly beaten, 
peace was signed at Euel (1649). 

This is the famous war of the Fronde, so called from a 
child's game. The haughty Conde', who had won the 



364 HISTORY OF MODKRN TIMES [a.d. 1649-1661. 

victory for the court, rendered himself unendurable to the 
queen and to Mazarin who had him arrested. The provincial 
nobility took up arms in favor of the rebellious prince, and 
Turenne, drawn into rebellion by his passion for the Duch- 
ess de Longueville, was vanquished at Rethel by the royal 
troops. Thus Mazarin was triumphant, when Paul de Gondi, 
incensed at failing to obtain the cardinal's hat which had 
been promised him, rekindled the war of the Fronde. 
Mazarin was obliged to flee to Liege (1651). Fortunately 
Turenne returned to his allegiance and saved the king by his 
skill at Bleneau and at the battle of the Faubourg Saint 
Antoine (1652). Conde was compelled to flee to Flanders 
and entered the Spanish service. The Fronde was ended 
(1653). Two years afterwards, when Parliament wished to 
oppose the registration of several edicts, the young king, 
booted and whip in hand on his way from the chase, entered 
the hall and forbade that assembly to continue its delibera- 
tions. 

Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659). — Peace being established 
at home, war abroad was prosecuted with energy. Turenne 
forced the Spanish lines before Arras (1654) and then won 
the battle of the Downs, which opened to him the Nether- 
lands (1658). Several months later Mazarin signed the 
treaty of the Pyrenees (1659). Spain renounced Eoussillon, 
Cerdagne and Artois. The Infanta Maria Theresa married 
Louis XIV, renouncing all claims on the crown of Spain, 
but Mazarin so managed matters that the renunciation 
should be void. In the preceding year he had concluded 
with many German princes the league of the Khine, which 
Napoleon renewed a century and a half afterwards, though 
without greater profit to France. 

Mazarin died in 1661. His administration without being 
grand had been clever. His financial management, disas- 
trous for the treasury, had been lucrative for him and his 
friends. Nevertheless he left royalty free from all domestic 
obstacles, and France glorious in politics and arms, and 
even in letters and arts. Corneille, Descartes, Pascal and 
Pousin had long before begun what is called the century of 
Louis XIV. 



A.D. r;0.M()15.] ENGLAND FROM 1003-1674 365 



XVII 

ENGLAND FROM 1603 TO 1674 

Europe in 1661. — Thus France was entering upon the 
most brilliant reign of her old monarchy. Meanwhile the 
two defeated powers of the religious wars, Spain and 
Austria, were dressing their wounds : the former listlessly, 
for she remained thirty-five years under a moribund king ; 
the latter with the energy which Hungarian turbulence and 
the nearness of the Ottomans imposed, yet without either 
brilliancy or grandeur because of the insignificance of her 
princes. In Eastern Europe other ambitions were in motion, 
the Swedes against the Danes, the Eussians against the 
Poles. From the midst of these contentions the Elector of 
Brandenburg was trying to reap a harvest. The Turks from 
time to time were making terrible invasions, the last threats 
of an exhausted and declining power. The attention of man- 
kind was not as yet seriously attracted in that direction, but 
was already fixed upon Louis XIV. 

On examining the history of England during the Thirty 
Years' War we shall perceive that to the humiliation of the 
house of Austria in its Spanish and imperial branches cor- 
responds the political abasement of Great Britain during the 
same period, condemned to civil war or impotency by the 
secret or avowed Catholicism of its kings. 

Accession of the Stuarts. — James VI of Scotland, the son 
of Mary Stuart and great-grandson of Henry VIII, succeeded 
Elizabeth in 1603. He wore the two crowns without as yet 
uniting the two states in one. He abandoned the Protes- 
tant policy which in the preceding reign had saved Eng- 
land. He refused to cooperate in the projects of Henry IV, 
sought alliance with Spain and remained almost indifferent 
to the ruin of his son-in-law, the elector palatine. Never- 
theless he upheld Anglicanism against the Catholics, who 
formed the Grunpowder Plot (1615), and against the Non-Con- 
formists, whom he persecuted without pity. '' No bishop, 
no king," said he with reason. Elizabeth had bequeathed 



366 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1614-1G25. 

to him absolute power. But a firm and glorious hand is 
required to exercise unfettered authority and under a vain 
and feeble prince Parliament was no longer docile. In vain 
did James send five deputies to the Tower in 1614. The 
Commons refused subsidies. In order to obtain money which 
his extravagance rendered necessary, he had recourse to the 
most shameful traffic, put the court offices and judicial func- 
tions up at auction, created and sold titles, and then wasted 
the riches shamefully acquired upon greedy favorites, of 
whom the most notorious was George Villiers, Marquis of 
Buckingham. 

When the Thirty Years' War broke out, James took ad- 
vantage of the perils which Protestantism in Germany was 
incurring to summon a new Parliament. But the Commons 
granted subsidies only on condition that justice should be 
done to the nation's grievances. The old spirit of liberty, 
repressed by the Tudors, was awakening. The king again 
dissolved the assembly (1622). Allured by the bait of a 
rich dowry, he sought for his son the hand of an infanta of 
Spain. This was a fresh outrage to the keenest feelings of 
the English people, but the plan failed, thanks to the folly 
of Buckingham. The marriage of the Prince of Wales with 
Henrietta of Prance, sister of Louis XIII, was almost as 
unpopular, because it placed a Catholic princess upon the 
throne of England. James I died in 1625. He published 
the True Law of Free Monarchy wherein he expounded the 
divine right of kings. The Anglican clergy, in its canons 
of 1608 erecting this right into a dogma, made absolute obe- 
dience to the reigning prince an article of faith. Thus the 
alliance of the altar and the throne against the public liber- 
ties was everywhere ratified, even in the heart of the 
Keformation. 

Charles I (1625-1649). — Charles I, a prince of sedate and 
pure character, thus. found himself from childhood imbued 
with the principles of despotism. His wife showed the 
Catholics a preference which wounded the nation. Buck- 
ingham, who had contrived to remain the favorite of the 
son as he had been the favorite of the father, retained an 
influence which diminished the respect of the country for 
the king. The struggle with the Commons immediately 
began afresh. This assembly was composed of the younger 
sons of the nobility and of citizens of the middle class, who, 
having grown rich under Elizabeth and James, filled all the 



A.D. l(i26-l<U0.] ENGLAND FROM 1603-1674 367 

liberal professions. It was the practice to vote the customs 
duties for the whole duration of the reign. The lower 
Chamber granted them only for one year and Charles in 
anger dismissed the assembly. The Parliament of 1626 
went still farther. It impeached Buckingham and was 
immediately prorogued. In the hope of acquiring some 
popularity Buckingham persuaded Charles I to support 
the Protestants of France and conducted a fleet to the 
rescue of La Rochelle. The expedition failed through the 
incapacity of the general (1627). 

This check encouraged the Commons, who forced the king 
to give his sanction to the Petition of Right and addressed 
to him two remonstrances, one against the illegal collection 
of the customs duties, the other against his favorite, who 
was described as the author of the public wretchedness. 
The king again prorogued Parliament, and John Felton, a 
fanatic, assassinated Buckingham (1628). C'harles then 
called to the ministry Archbishop Laud and the Earl of 
Strafford, and decided to govern without a Parliament, that 
is to say, contrary to the spirit of the British constitution. 

But without Parliament there were no subsidies, and con- 
sequently no means of taking part in the great events which 
were agitating Europe. This inaction discredited the Eng- 
lish government in the eyes of its own subjects. The enor- 
mous fines imposed upon opponents and the cruelty of Laud 
toward the dissenters, as in torturing Leighton and Prynne, 
intensified the general discontent. The prevailing senti- 
ment was manifest in the intense sympathy shown John 
Hampden when he opposed the tax of ship-money by legal 
resistance (1636). Scotland had been attacked in its Pres- 
byterian polity by Laud. It protested by an insurrection 
at Edinburgh (1637), and formed the political and religious 
league of the Covenant (1638), against which the English 
army led by Strafford refused to fight (1640). 

After eleven years without the Chambers, the king con- 
fessed himself vanquished and convoked a fourth Parlia- 
ment. It refused the least subsidy until justice should be 
done to the complaints of the nation, and was speedily 
prorogued. Compelled by necessity the king assembled a 
fifth Parliament (1640), which is famous in history as 
the Long Parliament. Exceeding its original purpose, it 
took charge of the taxes and of the judicial authority, 
abolished extraordinary tribunals, proclaimed its own peri- 



368 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1641-1644. 

odical character, and impeached of high crimes the Earl 
of Strafford, whose head fell upon the block (1641). 
Meanwhile a formidable insurrection broke out among the 
Irish, who slew 40,000 Protestants. When the king asked 
for means to reduce the rebels, Parliament replied by bitter 
remonstrances, and voted the militia bill, which put the 
army under its OAvn control. Charles endeavored to arrest 
the leaders of the opposition in the very midst of the assem- 
bly. Failing in his purpose he quitted London to begin the 
civil war (1642). 

The Civil War (1642-1647). — Parliament held the capi- 
tal, the great cities, the seaports and the fleet. The king 
was followed by most of the nobility, who were better 
trained to arms than the burgher militia. In the northern 
and western counties the Eoyalists or Cavaliers were in the 
majority. The Parliamentarians or Roundheads predomi- 
nated in the east ; the centre and the southeast, which were 
the richest sections, were close together, and formed a sort 
of belt round London. At first the king had the advantage. 
Prom Nottingham, where he had raised his standard, he 
marched upon London. The Parliamentarians, defeated at 
Edge Hill and Worcester (1642), redoubled their energy. 
Hampden raised a regiment of infantry among his tenants, 
friends and neighbors. Oliver Cromwell, then beginning to 
emerge from obscurity, formed in the eastern counties from 
the sons of farmers and small landed proprietors select 
squadrons, who opposed religious enthusiasm to the senti- 
ments of honor which animated the Cavaliers. The Par- 
liamentarians, victorious at Newbury, allied themselves 
with the Scotch by a solemn covenant. 
• Parliament was composed of various parties. The chief 
were Presbyterians, who though abolishing grades in the 
Church wished to preserve them in the state, and the Inde- 
pendents, who rejected both the peerage and the episcopacy, 
both the temporal and religious sovereignty of the king. 
Around the latter were the numerous sects derived from 
Puritanism, such as Levellers, Anabaptists and Millenarians. 
Their leaders were clever men. Ablest of all was Oliver 
Cromwell, an ambitious and sphinx-like genius, a politician 
and an enthusiast. With his squadrons surnamed Ironsides, 
he won the battle of Marston Moor in 1644 and then that 
of Newbury, which saved the revolution. These successes 
helped the Independents, although a minority in Parlia- 



A.D. 1645-1653.] ENGLAND FROM 1603-1674 369 

ment, to pass the self-denying ordinance which exchided 
the deputies from public affairs. This was equivalent to 
handing over the army to the Independents. Cromwell then 
prosecuted the war with vigor. The king's last army was 
crushed at Naseby (1645), while his lieutenant Montrose 
was beaten by the Scotch Covenanters. The disheartened 
king withdrew through weariness to the camp of the Scotch, 
who sold him to Parliament for 400,000 pounds sterling 
(1647). 

Execution of Charles I (1649). — The Presbyterians would 
gladly have treated with their captive. Supported by the 
army, Cromwell " purged " Parliament of the Presbyterian 
deputies, and the Independents cited the king before a court 
of justice, which sent him to the scaffold (January 30, 1649). 
His bloody death caused his acts of violence and perfidy to 
be forgotten. It revived the monarchical creed of England 
and royalty again became popular on the day when the head 
of the king rolled from under the axe of the executioner. 

The Commonwealth of England (1649-1660). Cromwell. — 
The Eepublic was proclaimed. Catholic Ireland and Scot- 
land, who remembered that the Stuarts were of Scottish 
race, protested against the revolution which had been ac- 
complished. Cromwell subdued the former by an atrocious 
war. By the victories of Dunbar and Worcester, he forced 
the latter to recognize the authority of the Parliament of 
London (1651). The new government announced its foreign 
policy by the daring but sagacious Kavigation Act. Thereby 
it prohibited the entrance into English ports of all vessels 
laden with merchandise, not produced on the soil or by the 
people whose flag the vessel bore. This act remained in 
force until January 1, 1850. In consequence England was 
forced to develop her manufactures and her marine. To 
the Dutch, " the teamsters of the sea," this measure meant 
ruin, and they declared war but were defeated. 

The country was tired of the Long Parliament, now called 
the Rump. One day Cromwell went to the hall of session, 
announced to the deputies that God was no longer with them, 
and had them driven out by his soldiers, who fastened to 
the door this notice, " House to let " (1653). But some time 
later he formed another Parliament, which he declared con- 
voked in the name of the Holy Spirit and which he soon 
dissolved. Then he had himself proclaimed Lord Protector. 
He was king without the name. He employed his power 
2b 



370 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1654-1660. 

for the welfare and greatness of his country. At home he 
ensured order and developed commerce and industry. 
Abroad he beheld his alliance entreated by Spain and sought 
by France. Blake, his admiral, thrice defeated the Dutch 
and forced them to abandon hope of provisioning the Eng- 
lish market. The Spaniards lost their galleons as well 
as Jamaica and Dunkirk. The Barbary States were chas- 
tised ; the Pope was threatened with hearing " the English 
cannon thunder at the Castle of San Angelo" if his perse- 
cution of the Eeformed Party did not cease. Thus Crom- 
well resumed the role which the Stuarts had abandoned 
and which Louis XIV was about to abandon, of defender 
of Protestant interests. Unfortunately for England he re- 
tained power only five years (1658), His son Richard suc- 
ceeded, but could not replace him and abdicated after a few 
months. England relapsed into anarchy. The clever Gen- 
eral Monk paved the way for the return of monarchy. He 
dissorlved the Rump Parliament, which had again assembled, 
formed a Parliament devoted to himself, and the combined 
Tories and Whigs recalled the Stuarts without conditions 
(1660). 

It was an error to declare that twenty years of revolution 
had passed over England in vain, and to believe that the 
ancient order of things could be reestablished unchanged. 
That mistake was soon to render necessary a second revo- 
lution. Moreover the despotism of the Tudors was not 
according to the ancient order of things, for the oldest thing 
in England was public liberty, which had been temporarily 
eclipsed by the fatigue of thirty years' warfare during the 
struggle of the Roses. Then had come the Reformation 
which had engrossed all minds, and the war with Philip 
II, when the very existence of England had been at stake. 
Confronted by such perils, the country had allowed the 
authority of its kings to increase. But now that Spain was 
dying and France no longer threatening and the religious 
questions definitely settled, England wished to reenter her 
ancient path. 

Charles II (1660-1685). — Charles II seemed at first to 
understand the state of the popular mind. He remained 
faithful to Anglican Protestantism and permitted the Par- 
liament to enjoy its ancient prerogatives. But frivolous 
and debauched, he soon found himself forced through need 
of money to make himself dependent upon the Commons 



A.D. 1660-1674.] ENGLAND FROM 1003-1674 371 

for the sake of receiving subsidies, or upon some foreign 
power for the purpose of obtaining therefrom a pension. 
His choice was quickly made. The spectacle of France and 
of her king revived in him the despotic instincts of his 
fathers. The dread of Parliament, of its remonstrances 
and its complaints, threw him into the arms of Louis XIV. 
He sold to him Mardick and Dunkirk, two of Cromwell's 
conquests (1662). After the triple alliance of The Hague 
(1666), which his people imposed upon him that they might 
arrest France in the Netherlands, he sold himself. Louis 
paid him a pension of 2,000,000 francs until his death. 

But the fear of anarchy, which in 1660 had prostrated 
England at the feet of Charles II, had vanished. Little by 
little, there had been formed in the heart of the nation and 
in Parliament an opposition, which in 1674 was strong 
enough to extort the Test Bill. This bill was the prelude 
to the second and imminent revolution. Let us pause for a 
time at this point in the history of Charles II. Under him 
during the first part of the reign of Louis XIV, England 
counted no more in continental affairs than did Spain or the 
empire. Later on we shall trace the events which will hurl 
the Stuarts from the throne and give to Great Britain the 
leadership in the opposition to France. 



372 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 16G1-1683. 



XVIII 

LOUIS XIV FROM 1661 TO 1685 

Colbert. — After the death of Mazarin Louis XIV an- 
nounced his intention of governing without any prime min- 
ister. This sovereign, then aged twenty-four, throughout his 
after life kept the pledge which he had taken to exercise 
manfully his royal trade. His was not a great intellect, 
and yet despite his faults he was a great king. At least 
during the first half of his reign, he practised the chief art 
of sovereigns, which is to understand how to choose good 
depositaries of their power. 

Colbert, intrusted from 1661 to 1683 with the finances, 
agriculture, commerce, manufactures and the navy, caused 
all these branches of the national activity to prosper. The 
period of his ministry is the most glorious in the reign of 
Louis XIV, for he moderated the king's ambition and de- 
veloped the national forces. He found a debt of 430,000,000 
francs, the revenues expended two years in advance, and the 
treasury receiving only 35,000,000 out of the 84,000,000 of 
annual taxes. He severely investigated cases of fraud, re- 
duced such taxes as were imposed only on the humbler 
classes, but increased the indirect imposts which every one 
paid. Every year he drew up a sort of national budget, and 
raised the net revenue of the treasury to 89,000,000. He 
encouraged industry by subsidies, and protected it by tar- 
iffs which imposed heavy duties upon similar products from 
abroad. 

In order to facilitate business and transportation internal 
customs-daties were abolished in many provinces, highways 
were repaired or created, and the canal of Languedoc was 
constructed between the ocean and the Mediterranean. He 
organized the five great commercial companies of the East 
Indies, the West Indies, the Levant, Senegal and the North, 
which competed with the merchants of London and Amster- 
dam ; and he encouraged the merchant marine by bounties. 
The military marine developed such vigorous life that in 



A.D. 1()67-1672.] LOUIS XIV FROM 16G1-1685 373 

1692 it became possible to equip more than 300 vessels of 
all sizes. Thanks to the Maritime Inscription, which fur- 
nished 70,000 mariners, the recruiting of the crews was 
ensured. The port of Rochefort was created, that of Dun- 
kirk was bought back from the English, Brest and Toulon 
were enlarged, and a magnificent colonial empire, founded 
in the Antilles and in North America, would have delivered 
that continent to French influence had men understood how 
to carry out the plans of the great minister. 

Louvois. — At the same time Louvois was organizing the 
army, which he compelled to wear a uniform. He created 
the companies of grenadiers and hussar corps, and intro- 
duced the bayonet. He founded the artillery schools of 
Douai, Metz and Strasburg, organized thirty regiments of 
militia which the communes equipped, and companies 
of cadets, in which originated the school of Saint Cyr and 
the Poly technique. Furthermore he subjected even officers 
of noble birth to strict discipline. A great engineer and 
patriotic citizen, Vauban, fortified the frontiers. 

War with Flanders (1667). —Louis XIV, dazzled by the 
forces which two clever ministers placed at his disposal, 
conducted himself arrogantly toward all the foreign powers. 
He exacted from the Pope and from the king of Spain 
ample satisfaction for insults to the French ambassadors, 
chastised the corsairs of Tunis and Algiers, and, abandon- 
ing the policy of Francis I, sent 6000 men to aid the 
emperor against the Ottomans, and thus made himself 
ostensibly the protector of the empire. At the death of 
Philip IV, availing himself of the right of devolution in 
force in Brabant, he claimed to inherit the Spanish Nether- 
lands through his wife, Maria Theresa, the eldest sister of 
the new king of Spain, Charles II. Holland and England 
were at first neutral. Spain thus left alone could not de- 
fend herself. The French armies in three months' time 
captured the strongholds of western Flanders, and in 
seventeen days in the depth of winter overran all Franche- 
Comte (1668). Then the maritime powers took the alarm. 
Holland, England and Sweden concluded the triple alli- 
ance of The Hague. As the king lacked audacity on the 
one day when it was most essential, he signed the peace 
of Aix-la-Chapelle, which left him only a dozen such towns 
as Charleroy, Douai, Tournay, Oudenarde and Lille (1668). 

The War with Holland (1672). — Four years of peace 



374 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1672-1678. 

were employed in preparing a terrible storm against a lit- 
tle country, Holland. Colbert, who wished to develop the 
maritime commerce of France, grew anxious at the 15,000 
merchant vessels of the Dutch. Moreover, when he im- 
posed exorbitant duties on their cloths, they retaliated by 
onerous duties on French wines and brandies. Therefore 
Colbert did not oppose a war which seemed likely to rid 
French commerce of a formidable rival. Louvois desired 
war to render himself necessary. Louis XIV declared it 
that he might humble those republicans who had just placed 
a check on his good fortune. Thereby he abandoned the 
policy of Henry IV and of Richelieu, which was the pro- 
tection of small states and of Protestantism and opposition 
to useless conquests. Louis XIV, however, was far more 
the successor of Philip II than the heir of Henry IV and 
of the great cardinal. 

Having subsidized Sweden and England, he suddenly 
deluged (1672) Holland with 100,000 men commanded by 
Turenne and Conde. The Hhine was passed. All the 
strongholds opened their gates and the French encamped at 
four leagues' distance from Amsterdam. But the delays of 
Louis XIV saved the Dutch. They deposed and murdered 
their Grand Pensioner, Jan de Witt, put in his place as 
stadtholder William of Orange, who opened the locks, 
flooded the country and forced the invaders to retreat 
before the inundation. At the same time he formed a for- 
midable coalition against Louis. Spain, the emperor, many 
German princes, and even England, though her king was 
pensioned by Louis, joined Holland. 

France made headway everywhere. The king in person 
subjugated Franche-Comte (1674). Turenne by an admirable 
campaign drove the imperialists out of Alsace; but was 
killed himself the following year. Conde after the bloody 
battle of Senef no longer commanded an army, and Luxem- 
bourg and Crequi were poor substitutes for the two great 
generals. Meanwhile the invasion of France, on the north 
by the Spaniards, and on the east by the imperialists, was 
repulsed. Duquesne and d'Estrees defeated the fleets of 
Holland and ravaged her colonies. His abandonment by 
England decided Louis to accept the treaty of Nimeguen 
which awarded him Franche-Comte with fourteen Flemish 
strongholds, and forced Denmark and Brandenburg to restore 
all the conquests which they had made from Sweden. Thus 



A..D. 1685.] LOUIS XIV FROM 1661-1685 375 

France emerged greater than before from a struggle with all 
Europe. The French northern and eastern frontiers became 
farther from Paris. But this proudest period of the reign 
was also the point of departure for the calamities which 
were soon to follow. The war with Holland had directed 
against France the coalitions which France had formerly 
organized against Austria, and had founded the good fortune 
of William of Orange, who a few years afterwards became 
king of England. 

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). — Thus that war 
was a first mistake. Other similar mistakes were sure to 
follow, for after the death of Colbert in 1683 the hard and 
narrow influence of Louvois and of Madame de Maintenon 
was no longer counteracted. " If it hath not pleased God," 
said Henry IV, in the preamble to the edict of Nantes, "to 
permit His Holy Name to be adored by all our subjects in 
one and the same form of religion, let it at least be adored 
with the same intent . . . ; and pray ye unto the Divine 
Goodness that He may make men understand that in the 
observance of this ordinance exists the principal foundation 
of their union, tranquillity and repose, and of the re- 
establishment of this State in its pristine splendor." These 
glowing words had worthily inaugurated the new era which 
Richelieu and Mazarin continued abroad by their Protes- 
tant alliances, and at home by their respect for religious 
liberty. 

But Louis XIV, intoxicated with his omnipotence and 
led astray by the fatal counsels of a party, which during 
three centuries had ruined every cause which it defended, 
undertook to repudiate the toleration of Henry IV as he 
had repudiated his diplomacy. As he allowed in his king- 
dom but one will, his own, and but one law, that of the 
absolute prince, so he wished that there should be but one 
religion, Catholicism. To convert the Protestants he first 
sent into the cantons where they were numerous booted 
missionaries or the dragonades. In 1685 he officially 
revoked the edict of Nantes. The Reformers were bound to 
undergo conversion or to leave the kingdom. Their children 
were taken from them by force to be reared in the Catholic 
Church. They had furnished to French industries its most 
skilful workmen. Two or three hundred thousand quitted 
the kingdom, among whom were 9000 sailors, 12,000 soldiers, 
and 600 officers. One suburb of London was peopled by 



376 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1685. 

these refugees. Berlin and Brandenburg welcomed great 
numbers. Foreigners became possessed of the secrets of the 
French manufactures. Among the learned men who during 
the last century and a half have been the honor of Holland, 
Germany, England and even of Italy, there are many 
descendants of the exiles of Louis XIV. 




OoMrlgl.l, B98. t.y T. Y. Crowell i- Co. 




Eagrttivd b> Cullou, OKuiiu i Co., S- Xj. 



A.D. 1671^1679.] THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION Zll 



XIX 

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 
(1688) 

Awakening of Liberal Ideas in England (1673-1679). — 
The reply of the Protestant powers to the revocation of the 
edict of Nantes was the English revolution, which hurled 
from the throne the Catholic James II and placed thereon 
the Calvinist William III. 

Charles II had hired himself out to Louis XIV, but 
England had not ratified the bargain. In 1668 she forced 
her king to join the Swedes and Dutch in rescuing the 
Spanish Netherlands. Again in 1674 she compelled him to 
renounce the French alliance, and then by opposing France 
to bring about the peace of Nimeguen. The king, defeated 
on a political question, was defeated again on a question of 
religion. He was suspected of favoring Catholicism. 
Therefore Parliament voted the Test Bill, which obliged 
officials to declare under oath that they did not believe in 
transubstantiation. Thus public employment was closed 
to Catholics and their exclusion lasted until 1829. The 
Popish plot, imagined by the wretched Titus Gates, 
and the memory of the fire of London in 1666 which had 
been attributed to the Catholics, provoked extremely rigor- 
ous measures. Eight Jesuits were hanged. Viscount Staf- 
ford was beheaded in spite of his seventy years, and the 
Duke of York, the king's brother, who had abjured Protes- 
tantism, was threatened with deprivation of his rights to 
the crown. In order to restrain the royal despotism the 
Whigs or liberals who controlled Parliament passed the 
famous bill of habeas corpus in 1679, which confirmed 
the law of personal security written in Magna Charta, and 
so often violated. Every prisoner must be examined by the 
judge within twenty-four hours after his arrest, and released 
or set at liberty under bail if the proofs were insufficient. 

Catholic and Absolutist Reaction. James II (1685). — 



378 HISTORY OF MODEBX TIMES [a.d. 1680-1089. 

Thus Parlip.ment at the same time repressed the dissenters 
and the court. The English were peacefully effecting their 
internal revolution when the violent put everything in peril. 
The Puritans rose in Scotland. They were crushed and a 
new Test Bill imposed upon the Scotch passive obedience to 
the king. At London a conspiracy to prevent the Duke 
of York from succeeding his brother led to the execution 
of many AVhig chiefs and to the exile of others. Thus the 
liberal party was defeated. So James II quietly took pos- 
session of the throne in 1685, the year when the edict of 
Nantes was revoked. His nephew Monmouth and the 
Duke of Argyle tried hard to overthrow him, but both per- 
ished after the defeat of Sodgemoor, and the odious Jef- 
fries sent many of their partisans to the block. If the 
Anglican clergy and those among the aristocracy who were 
called Tories or conservatives were disposed to pardon the 
Stuarts for their despotism, they had no intention of allow- 
ing royalty by right divine, a deo rex, a rege lex, to bring 
back Catholicism which surely would demand restitution of 
the immense church property wdiich they had seized. When 
James sent to the Vatican a solemn embassy to reconcile 
England with the Roman Church, the archbishop of Can- 
terbury protested. He was thrown into the tower with six 
of his suffraQ,"ans. 

Fall of James II (1688). Declaration of Rights. Wil- 
liam III (1689). — These acts of violence together with the 
birth in 1688 of a Prince of Wales whose mother was an 
Italian Catholic, and whose rights of inheritance would 
precede those of the Calvinist AYilliam of Orange, the son- 
in-law of James II, made the stadtholder of Holland ac- 
cede to the propositions of the Whigs. James deserted by 
all fled to Erance, and Parliament proclaimed William III 
king. It first made him sign the Declaration of Eights, 
which substituted royalty by consent for royalty by divine 
right, and which contained nearly all the guarantees of a 
free government : the periodical convocation of Parliament, 
the voting of taxes, laws made by the joint consent of the 
Chambers and the king, and the right of petition. A few 
months later Locke, one of those whom James II had per- 
secuted, set forth the theory of the revolution of 1688, by 
recognizing national sovereignty and liberty as the sole 
legitimate and durable principles of a government. 

A New Political Right. — Thus a new right, that of the 



A.D. 1089.] THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 379 

people, arose in modern society in opposition to the abso- 
lute right of kings, and humanity entered upon a new stage 
of its jcjurney. Feudalism had Vjeen an advance over Car- 
lovingian barbarism. Royalty had been likewise an ad- 
vance over mediciival fcmdalism. After having constituted 
the modern nations, developed commerce and industry, 
favored the blossoming of the arts and letters, royalty 
undertook to render its absolute right eternal, and demanded 
of the Catholic Church to aid it in maintaining itself 
therein. England had the good fortune, thanks to her 
insular position and to her traditions, to grasp the principle 
which was destined to be that of the future. To her wis- 
dom she already owes two centuries of tranquillity amid 
the ruins which have been crumbling around h-u-. 



380 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1681-1(502. 



XX 

COALITIONS AGAINST FRANCE 
(1688-1714) 

Formation of the League of Augsburg (1686). — In the 
sixteenth century and in the first half of the seventeenth, 
France took in hand the defence of Protestantism and of 
the general liberties of Europe against the Hapsburgs of 
Madrid and of Vienna and against the ultramontanism 
of the Vatican. But with Louis XJN she threatened the 
conscience of the adherents of the Eeformation and the 
independence of states. England took up the role which 
France was abandoning and' grew mighty in it, as had done 
Henry IV and Richelieu. 

While the Protestants who had been expelled from France 
carried in all directions their resentment against Louis, he 
wantonly braved Europe by aggressions made in time of 
peace. By duplicity he gained possession of twenty cities, 
among which was Strasburg (1681). He treated the Pope 
with arrogance and compelled the Doge of Genoa to come 
and humble himself at Versailles. He bought Casal in Italy 
so as to dominate the valley of the Po, claimed a part of the 
Palatinate as the dowry of his sister-in-law, opposed the 
installation of the archbishop of Cologne, and occupied 
Bonn, Neuss and Kaiserwerth. The Powers, rendered 
uneasy by such ambition, formed as early as 1686 the 
League of Augsburg which England joined in 1689. 

War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697). — Louis 
directed his first blows against William. He gave James 
II a magnificent reception, and furnished him with a fleet 
and army, which landed in Ireland but lost the battle of 
the Boyne. Tourville, forced by the king's orders to attack 
ninety-nine vessels with forty-four, suffered the disaster of 
La Hogue (1692). Thenceforth the sea belonged to the 
English and French commerce was at their mercy despite 
the exploits of bold captains like Jean Bart. On land the 



A.D. 1602-1701.] COALITIONS AGAINST FRANCE 381 

French, maintained the advantage. Luxemburg beat the 
allies at Fleurus, and Neerwinden. Catinat occupied Pied- 
mont and assured its possession by the victories of Staffarde 
and La Marsaille. But France was exhausting herself in 
an unequal struggle. '' Half of the kingdom/' wrote 
Vauban, "lives on the alms of the other half." Moreover 
Charles II of Spain was dying. The Spanish succession 
was at last about to be thrown open, and Europe needed 
repose in order to prepare herself for this event. Hoping 
to obtain peace, Louis instigated dissensions among his 
enemies. The desertion of the Duke of Savoy, to whom 
his states and even Pignerol were restored, induced the 
allies to sign the treaty of Eyswick (1697). Louis XIV 
recognized William III as king of England, restored to the 
empire with the exception of Alsace whatever had been 
awarded him, put the Duke of Lorraine again in possession 
of his duchy, but kept the west of San Domingo, Landau 
and Sari-elouis. 

War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). — At Madrid 
the elder branch of .the house of Austria was about to 
become extinct. France, Austria and Bavaria each dis- 
puted the inheritance of Charles 11. Louis XIV asserted 
the rights of his wife, Maria Theresa, the eldest child of 
Philip IV. Leopold I had married her younger sister, 
Margarita. The Elector of Bavaria laid claim in the name 
of his minor son, the grandson of this same Margarita. The 
first plan for the partition of the Spanish monarchy, favor- 
ably entertained by William, was rejected by Charles II 
who preferred the boy Duke of Bavaria. That youth died. 
France and Austria being thus left as the only claimants, 
Charles by a will bequeathed his estates to the Duke of 
Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV, in the hope of preserving 
the integrity of his monarchy. 

Europe was alarmed at this added greatness of the French 
Bourbons. Louis XIV alarmed it still more by preserving 
for the new king, Philip V, his rights of eventual succes- 
sion to the crown of Saint Louis. Such succession would 
have reestablished to the advantage of France the enormous 
power of Charles V. Louis posted French garrisons in the 
Spanish Netherlands to the great consternation of Holland. 
Then on the death of James II he recognized his son as 
king of England, thereby openly violating the treaty of 
Eyswick (1701). A new league was soon concluded at The 



382 HISTOBY OF ^fOI)EFX TIMES [a.d. 1701-1713. 

Hague between England and the United Provinces. Prus- 
sia, the empire, Portugal and even the Duke of Savoy, the 
father-in-law of Philip V, suecessivel}^ joined it (1701- 
1703). Three superior men, Heinsius, Grand Pensioner of 
Holland, Marlborough, leader of the Whig party in England, 
a clever diplomat and great general, and Prince Eugene, a 
Frenchman who had emigrated to Austria, guided the coali- 
tion. France had Chamillart to replace Colbert and Louvois. 
Fortunately her generals, except the incapable Yilleroi, Avere 
better than her ministers. 

Austria began hostilities by reverses. Eugene was de- 
feated at Luzzara by the Duke of Vendome (1702), as was 
another imperial army at Friedlingen and at Hochstedt by 
Villars. But IMarlborough landed in the Netherlands, and 
the Archduke Charles in Portugal. The Duke of Savoy 
deserted France and the Camisards rose in the Cevennes. 
The loss of the second terrible battle of Hochstedt or Blen- 
heim drove the French ont of Germany (1701). The battle 
of Kamillies gave the Netherlands to the allies ; that of 
Turin gave them Milan and the kingdom of Naples (1706). 
Toulon w^as menaced (1707). To arrest the enemy in the 
Netherlands Louis XIV collected another magnificent army. 
It Avas put to rout at Oudenarde. Lille surrendered after 
tAvo months of siege (1708). The Avinter of 1709 added its 
rigors to the French disasters and Louis sued for peace. 
The allies required that he should himself expel his grand- 
son from Spain. He preferred to continue the fight. Villars 
had still 100,000 men. They Avere defeated at Malplaquet. 

In the meantime Vendome secured the throne of Spain 
to Philip V by the victory of Villaviciosa (1710), and the 
Archduke Charles, the candidate of the allies, became em- 
peror of Germany by the death of his brother (1711). The 
European balance of poAver Avould have been disturbed in 
a much more threatening manner by his uniting to the 
imperial croAvn the croAvns of Naples and Spain, than by 
Philip V at Madrid. Thus England had no more interest 
in this Avar. The Whigs Avho Avished to continue it fell 
from poAver, and the Tory ministry that replaced them 
entered upon negotiations Avith France. Several months 
later the imperial army was beaten at Denain hj Villars. 
This glorious victory hastened the conclusion of peace, 
Avhich w^as signed at Utrecht, by England, Portugal, Savoy, 
Prussia and Holland (1713). 



AD. 1713-1715.] COALITIONS AGAINST FRANCE 383 

Treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt (1713-1714). — Louis 
accepted the succession as established in England by the 
revolution of 1683, ceded to the English the island of New- 
foundland, pledged himself to demolish the fortifications 
of Dunkirk and agreed that the crowns of France and 
Spain should never be united on one and the same head. 
Holland obtained the right of placing garrisons in most of 
the strongholds of the Spanish Netherlands so as to pre- 
vent their falling into the hands of France. The Duke of 
Savoy received Sicily with the title of king. The Elector 
of Brandenburg was recognized as king of Prussia, having 
just purchased that title from the emperor. The latter, 
left alone, continued the war, but the capture of Landau 
and Freiburg induced him to sign the treaty of Rastadt 
(1714) by which he acquired some of the foreign posses- 
sions of Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Sardinia, 
Milan and the fortresses of Tuscany. 

France made many sacrifices but Spain, no longer dis- 
tracted by her Netherlands, became her natural ally instead 
of being as for two centuries her constant enemy. This 
change meant security on the southern French frontier and 
hence greater strength in the northeast. Louis XIV died 
shortly afterwards (171 5). He had reigned seventy-two years. 

Louis XIV the Personification of Monarchy by Divine 
Right. — He left the kingdom without commerce, without 
manufactures, drained of men and money, with a public debt 
which would amount at the present day to .^1,600,000,000. 
Thus the setting of that long reign did not fulfil the 
promise of its dawn. The acquisition of two provinces, 
Flanders and Franche-Comte, and of several cities, Stras- 
burg, Landau and Dunkirk, w^as a small compensation 
for the frightful misery which France endured and which 
she might have been spared, had Louis remained faithful 
to the x>olicy of Henry IV and of Richelieu. More- 
over she had declined in just the same degree as others 
had risen. SpaiA had not recovered her strength. Austria 
still remained feeble. But two youthful royal houses, Sar- 
dinia and Prussia, formed in Italy and Germany the corner- 
stones of mighty edifices Avhose proportions could not as 
yet be described, and England already grasped the role, 
which she w^as to retain for a century and a half, of the 
preponderant power in Europe by virtue of her commerce, 
her navy, her colonies and her gold. 



384 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1715. 

By the matchless brilliancy of his court, his magnificent 
festivals, his sumptuous buildings, his taste for arts and 
letters ; by his lofty bearing, the dignity which he showed 
in everything, the serene confidence which he cherished in 
his rights and his superior intelligence, Louis was the most 
majestic incarnation of royalty. To him is attributed the 
saying : " I am the state." In consequence of the ener- 
getic centralization which placed all France at Versailles, and 
Versailles in the study of the prince, the saying was true. 
He firmly believed, and others believed with him, that the 
property as well as the lives of his subjects belonged to 
him ; that he was their intelligence, their will, their spring 
of action; that is to say, that 20,000,000 of men lived in 
him and for him. But his errors, his vices, were sacred 
also, like those of the gods of Olympus whose images 
filled his palaces. At need the judiciary served his pas- 
sions, the army his caprices, the public treasury his pleas- 
ures, and debauchery became a royal institution which 
conferred on the mistresses of the king rank at court. 

Such a government might suit the Orient which knows 
only force and submits to it with resignation. It could not 
last in our Western world where humanity has come to con- 
sciousness of itself and of its lofty rights. By developing 
manufactures and commerce and consequently the fortunes 
of his people, and by favoring arts and letters or in other 
words the development of the mind, Louis himself paved 
the way for the formation of two new powers which were 
destined, first to undermine, then to overthrow his system. 



A.D. 1650.] ARTS, LETTERS AND SCIENCES 385 



XXI 

ARTS, LETTERS AND SCIENCES IN THE SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURY 

Letters and Arts in France. — The sixteenth century 
effected religious reform. The eighteenth was to effect 
political reform. Placed between these two revolutionary 
ages, the seventeenth was and has stood forth, especially 
in France, as the great literary epoch. The generations 
which live in stormy times rise higher and descend lower, 
but never reach that calm beauty which is the reflection 
of a peaceful yet fertile age, where art is its own end and 
its own recompense. Long before Louis XIV took the 
government in hand and reigned by himself (1661), France 
had already reaped half of the literary glory which the 
seventeenth century had in store. Many of her great 
writers had produced their masterpieces and nearly all 
were in full possession of their talent. The Cid was acted 
in 1636, and the Discourse on Method appeared in 1637. 

Thus the magnificent harvest, then garnered by French 
intellect, germinated and fructified of itself. When under 
Henry IV and Eichelieu, calm succeeded to the sterile 
agitation of religious struggles, intellectual questions took 
the precedence over those of war ; and when several great 
men appeared, all the higher society followed them. People 
discussed a beautiful verse as formerly they had discussed 
a handsome gun. They would even have lost themselves in 
.the mental refinements and elaborate subtleties of the Hotel 
de Rambouillet, had it not been for the manly accents of 
Corneille and of his heroes, the supreme good sense of 
Moliere, Boileau and La Fontaine, the biblical eloquence 
of Bossuet, the energy of Pascal and the penetrating grace 
of Eacine. On that roll of honor let us also place the 
names of Madame de Sevigne for her Letters, of La Eoche- 
foucauld for his 3Iaxims, of La Bruyere for his Characters, 
of Fenelon for his Telemaque, of Saint Simon for his 
formidable Memoirs and of Bourdaloue for his Sermons. 
2c 



386 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1650. 

Such learned men as Casaubon, Scaliger, Saumaise. du 
Cange, Baluze and the Benedictines illumined the con- 
fusion of our origin and gave us a better acquaintance with 
antiquity. Bayle continued the traditions of Rabelais and 
of Montaigne. Descartes was the great revolutionist of the 
time, demanding that the mind should banish all preexist- 
ing ideas, so as to be free from all prejudice and all error 
and thus admit only such truths as evidence should invin- 
cibly force upon the reason. Through prudence Descartes 
veiled the eyes of his contemporaries to the consequences of 
his Method, yet that method became the essential condition 
of philosophical progress. It is the law of science and it 
will become the law of the world. 

At that time France possessed four painters of high 
rank : Poussin, Lesueur, Claude Lorraine, and at some dis- 
tance from them Lebrun ; one admirable sculptor, Puget ; 
the talented architects, Mansart and Perrault ; and a clever 
musician, Lulli. 

Letters and Arts in Other Countries. — In Italy there was 
literary as well as political decline. In Spain appeared 
Lope de Vega and Calderon. The Don Quixote of Cer- 
vantes belongs in date and subject to another century 
when men still thought of the Middle Ages, even though 
only with ridicule. Then England boasted her glorious 
literary age with Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden and Addison. 
Germany was passing through her age of iron. The Ref- 
ormation, which had fallen into the hands of princes as 
Italian Catholicism had into the hands of the Jesuits, 
seems to have arrested thought. 

The Dutch Grotius and the Swede Puffendorf settled the 
rights of peace and war according to the principles of 
humanity and justice. The English Hobbes, a pensioner of 
Charles II, maintained in his Leviathan that war was the 
natural state of humanity and that men needed a good 
despot to keep them from cutting each other's throats. 
This was the theory of absolute power according to phi- 
losophy, as Bossuet had expounded it according to religion. 
This doctrine was happily refuted by another philosopher, 
Locke, in his essay on Chiil Government. Therein the 
councillor of William III demonstrated that civil society is 
subjected to the established power not otherwise than by the 
consent of the community. " The community," said he, 
" can set up whatever government it sees fit. That govern- 



A.D. 1650.] ARTS, LETTERS AND SCIENCES 387 

ment in order to conform to reason must fulfil two condi- 
tions : the first is, that the power of making the laws, 
binding upon the subjects as well as upon the monarch, 
ought to be separated from the power which executes them ; 
the second is that no one shall be required to pay taxes 
without his consent, given personally or by his representa- 
tives." "Equality," he said, in another place, "is the 
equal right which each man has to liberty, so that no one 
is subjected to the will or authority of another." This 
treatise appeared in 1690, just a century before the French 
Revolution, of which Locke is one of the precursors. What 
is the necessity of common consent, established as a prin- 
ciple of all political society, but the recognition of the 
sovereignty of the nation ! The ideas of the English phi- 
losopher, like those of Descartes, were destined to make 
progress slowly throughout the eighteenth century. 

Two other philosophers deserve mention for their influ- 
ence in the realm of metaphysics. They are the pantheist 
Spinoza, a Jew of Amsterdam, and Leibnitz, the universal 
genius. 

In the arts the first rank then belonged to the Dutch 
and Flemish schools, represented by Eubens, Van Dyck, 
E-embrandt and the two Teniers. Spain possessed Velas- 
quez, Murillo and Eibera, who left no heirs. Italy brought 
forth Guido and Bernini, who mark the decline against 
which nevertheless Salvator Eosa was a protest. England 
and Germany had not a single artist. 

Science in the Seventeenth Century. — The universe is two- 
fold. There is a moral and a physical world. Antiquity 
traversed the one in every direction. It extended and 
developed the faculties of which God has deposited the 
germs in our mortal clay. But of the physical world it 
knew almost nothing. This ignorance was destined to last 
so long as the true methods of investigation were unknown. 
They could be found only after men had become convinced 
that the universe is governed by the immutable laws of 
eternal wisdom and not by the arbitrary volitions of capri- 
cious powers. Alchemy, magic, astrology, all those follies 
of the Middle Ages, became sciences on the day when man, 
no longer halting at isolated phenomena, strove to grasp 
the laws themselves which produced them. That day be- 
gan in the sixteenth century with Copernicus, but it is only 
in the seventeenth that the revolution was accomplished 



388 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1600-1700. 

and triumphant with Bacon and Galileo. The former pro- 
claimed its necessity ; the latter by his discoveries demon- 
strated its benefits. 

At the head of the scientific movement of this century 
were Kepler of Wurtemberg, who proved the truth of 
Copernicus' system; Galileo of Pisa, who expiated in the 
cells of the Inquisition his demonstration of the motion of 
the earth; the Englishman Newton, who discovered the 
principal laws of optics and universal gravitation; Leibnitz, 
who disputes with him the honor of having created the 
differential calculus; Pascal, the inventor of the calculus 
of probabilities; Descartes, equally celebrated as a man of 
learning and a philosopher, for these mighty minds did not 
confine themselves to a single study. 

In their train a throng of men entered eagerly upon the 
paths thus thrown open. Papin ascertains the power of 
steam as a motive force; Rsemer, the velocity of light; 
Harvey, the circulation of the blood; and Cassini and Picard 
fix the meridian of Paris. To the thermometer constructed 
by Galileo, Toricelli adds the barometer, Huygens the 
pendulum clock, and science finds itself armed with pre- 
cious instruments for investigation. 

Thus in this century three countries were in full decline. 
They are Germany, which had Leibnitz but almost allowed 
Kepler to die of misery; Italy, which persecuted Galileo, 
and Spain, where we find only painters and playwrights. 
The two peoples, France and England, to whom strength 
and preponderance had passed, were on the contrary in the 
full tide of their literary age. 



A.D. 1476-1656.] CREATION OF RUSSIA 389 



XXII 

CREATION OF RUSSIA. DOWNFALL OF SWEDEN 

The Northern States at the Beginning of the Eighteenth 
Century. — The East and Northern Europe were an unknown 
region to the Eomans and Greeks. In the Middle Ages, 
the activity of the nations was displayed in countries of the 
centre and west. The Slavs and Scandinavians remained 
generally apart, uninfluential and obscure. The Russians 
had been subjugated by the Mongols. After long silence 
the Swedes had burst upon the empire under Gustavus 
Adolphus like a thunderbolt. Thanks to their victories 
over the Germans, Poles and Russians, the Baltic at the 
middle of the eighteenth century was a Swedish lake sur- 
rounded by an extended line of fortified posts, but their 
domination was fragile. It was constructed in defiance of 
geography and was surrounded by enemies who had an 
interest in its ruin. 

Poland still stretched from the Carpathians to the Baltic 
and from the Oder to the sources of the Dnieper and Volga, 
but its anarchical constitution and its elective royalty ren- 
dered it defenceless to the attacks of foreigners. An elector 
of Saxony was then king of Poland. 

The Russians were cut off by the Swedes, the Poles and 
the duchy of Courland from access to the southern Baltic. 
Likewise they were separated on the south from the Black 
Sea by Tartar hordes and by the warrior republic of the 
Cossacks, unruly subjects of Poland. They were shut in 
from every direction except toward the desert regions of 
Siberia. When the powerful republic of Novgorod fell in 
1476, their road was open to the Arctic Ocean and the east- 
ern Baltic. By the destruction of the Tartars of Astrakan, 
they had reached the Caspian Sea. At the treaty of Vilna 
(1656) they forced from the Poles the cession of Smolensk, 
Tchernigoff and the Ukraine. This was their first step 
toward the West. They already possessed formidable ele- 
ments of power. Ivan III had abolished in his family the 



390 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d 1682-1706. 

law of appanage, thereby establishing the unity of authority 
a,nd of the state. On the other hand he had retained it 
among the nobility, which in consequence became divided 
and enfeebled. In the sixteenth century Ivan IV spent 
fifteen years in breaking the boyars to the yoke with that 
implacable cruelty which won for him the surname of the 
Terrible, and a ukase in 1593 reduced all peasants to the 
servitude of the soil by forbidding them to change master 
and land. 

Peter the Great (1682). — He, who was destined to be the 
creator of Russia, in 1682, when ten years old, received the 
title of Tsar. Guided by the Genevese Lefort, who extolled 
to him the arts of the West, in 1697 he went to Saardam in 
Holland to there learn the art of building vessels. After- 
wards he studied England and her manufactures, and Ger- 
many and her military organization. At Vienna the news 
reached him that the Strelitzi had revolted. He hurried to 
Moscow, had 2000 hanged or broken on the wheel and 5000 
beheaded. Then he began his reforms. He organized regi- 
ments, in which he compelled the sonjs of the boyars to 
serve as soldiers before becoming ^officers. He founded 
schools in mathematics and astronomy, and a naval acad- 
emy, and undertook to unite the Don and the Volga by a 
canal. A great war interrupted these achievements. 

The preponderance of Sweden weighed upon her neigh- 
bors. At the death of the Swedish king, Charles XI, Rus- 
sia, Denmark and Poland thought the time had come for 
despoiling his successor, Charles XII, a youth of eighteen, 
and for wresting from the Swedes their provinces on the 
Baltic (1700). "If Charles XII was not Alexander, he 
might have been Alexander's foremost soldier." He fore- 
stalled the attack by an impetuous invasion of Denmark. 
Then he marched rapidly against 80,000 Russians, whom he 
defeated with 8,000 Swedes at the battle of Narva, expelled 
the Saxons from Livonia, pursued them into Saxony, de- 
throned Augustus II and forced him by the treaty of 
Altranstadt to abdicate his Polish crown in favor of Stan- 
islaus Lechzinski. 

But while he was wasting five years in these successful 
but fruitless wars (1701-1706), in his rear Peter the Great 
was creating an empire and forming an army modelled upon 
what he had seen in the kingdoms of the West. Peter con- 
quered Ingria and Carelia and founded Saint Petersburg 



A.D. 1703-1721.] CREATION OF RUSSIA 39l 

(1703), SO as to take possession of the Gulf of Finland. 
Charles XII then returned against him. While trying to 
effect a junction with Mazeppa, the Hetman of the Cos- 
sacks, who had promised him 100,000 men, he lost his way 
in the marshes of Pinsk and afforded the Tsar time to crush 
a Swedish relief force. The cruel winter of 1709 increased 
his distress. His defeat at Poltava (1709) forced him to 
flee with 500 horse to the Ottomans. From Bender, his 
place of refuge, he roused them against the Russians. One 
hundred and fifty thousand Ottomans crossed the Danube, 
and Peter, surrounded in his camp on the banks of the 
Pruth, would have been crushed had not the grand vizier 
been bribed by Catherine the Tsarina (1711). The Tsar 
restored Azoff and promised to withdraw his troops from 
Poland. 

By this treaty Charles XII was vanquished a second 
time. He persisted in remaining three years longer in 
Turkey and then set out again for Sweden, which the 
northern powers were despoiling. George I of England, 
Elector of Hanover, was buying Bremen and Yerden. The 
king of Prussia was seizing Stettin and Pomerania. Stral- 
sund still held out. Charles XII threw himself into it, 
defended it for a month, then returned to Sweden and met 
his death at the siege of Frederickshall, perhaps by treason 
(1718). 

He left Sweden exhausted by this war of fifteen years' 
duration. She was deprived of her foreign possessions, 
without agriculture, without manufactures, without com- 
merce, and had lost 250,000 men, the flower of her people, 
and her ascendency in northern Europe. This heroic advent- 
urer had annihilated the fortune of his people and ruined 
his country for a century. 

Peter on the contrary was creating the fortune of his 
empire. By the treaty of Nystadt he granted peace to the 
Swedes (1721), but only on condition of their renouncing 
all claim to Livonia, Esthonia, Ingria, a part of Carelia and 
the country of Viborg and Finland. When the ambassador 
of France im]olored less onerous terms, Peter replied, " I do 
not wish to see my neighbor's grounds from my windows." 

Thus Sweden declined and Eussia ascended. Thus a two- 
fold example was furnished to the world of what one man 
can do for the ruin or the advancement of nations not yet 
capable of controlling their destiny themselves. In 1716 



392 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1716-1725. 

the Tsar undertook another journey throughout Europe. 
This time he came to France, where he offered to replace 
Sweden as the ally of France against Austria. Cardinal Du- 
bois, who was the hireling of England, caused the rejection 
of his proposals. 

This journey was as fruitful as the first one in develop- 
ing the resources of Eussia. From it she gained engineers 
and workmen of all sorts, with manufactories and foundries. 
The Tsar established uniformity in weights and measures, 
a commercial tribunal, canals and shipyards. He opened 
mines in Siberia and highways for the products of China, 
Persia and India. He foresaw the future of the Amour 
Eiver, which empties into the Eastern Sea. In order to 
make the clergy entirely dependent upon him, he replaced 
the Patriarch by a synod, which he recognized as the 
supreme head of the Church, and he made of the Eussian 
nation a regiment, by applying the military hierarchy to the 
whole administration of his empire. His son Alexis was 
active against these reforms. The prince was tried, con- 
demned to death and probably executed. At all events 
Alexis died on the day after his sentence and many of his 
accomplices perished. A general was impaled and an arch- 
bishop was broken on the wheel. By means of this savage 
energy he succeeded, as he himself said, in dressing his herd 
of animals like men. " The Tsar Peter," said Frederick II, 
^' was the nitric acid which eats into iron." He died in 1725. 



A.D. 1715-1718.] CREATION OF PRUSSIA 393 



XXIII 

CREATION OF PRUSSIA. DECLINE OF FRANCE AND 
AUSTRIA 

Regency of the Duke of Orleans ; Ministries of Dubois^ the 
Buke of Bourbon and of Fleury (1715-1743). — The suc- 
cessor of Louis XIV was only five years old. Therefore, 
Parliament conferred the regency upon the Duke of Orleans, 
a brave and intelligent prince, but weakly amiable and of 
dissolute character, who intrusted the power to his former 
preceptor, Cardinal Dubois. Through fear of Philip V of 
Spain, who by birth was nearer to the throne of France than 
was the regent, Dubois made a close alliance with England, 
which paid him a pension ; and the spectacle was presented 
of the French being on their guard against the Spaniards, 
their friends of yesterday. Suddenly Cardinal Alberoni, the 
minister of Phili]3 V, revealed his plan of restoring to Spain 
what the treaty of Utrecht had taken from her. He en- 
deavored, by the help of the Ottomans, to keep Austria 
busy, to overthrow the regent by a conspiracy and reestab- 
lish the Stuarts through the sword of Charles XII. But 
Prince Eugene defeated the Ottomans at Belgrade (1717). 
The conspiracy against the regent failed. Charles XII per- 
ished in Norway. The English destroyed the Spanish fleet 
near Messina. The French entered Navarre. So Spain 
found herself crippled by the struggle and France was still 
under the regent and Dubois. 

Louis XIV had left behind him financial ruin. The 
state owed 2,500,000,000 francs, of which nearly one-third 
was already due. Tavo years' revenues had been spent in 
advance. Though the budget was 165,000,000 francs, the 
deficit was 78,000,000. The regent, after having exhausted 
every other means to no purpose, decided to have recourse 
to the expedients of Law. That bold Scotch financier had 
founded a wonderfully successful bank and also the India 
Company, which, successful at first, ended in a complete fail- 
ure. By clever manoeuvres, the bonds of the company were 



394 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1719-1738. 

raised to the fictitious value of 2,000,000,000 francs. The 
mirage could not last and men's eyes were opened. To 
save the company, Law united it with the bank, thereby 
entailing a double ruin. The public which had formerly 
crowded to the Rue Quincampoix for the sake of obtaining 
its paper, now crowded there to obtain its coin. Every- 
thing crumbled to pieces and Law fled, pursued by curses. 
Nevertheless he had opened up a new horizon as to the 
power of credit. The regency has a melancholy fame on 
account of the scandalous depravity of manners which, in 
the upper classes, suddenly followed the ostentatious piety 
of the last years of Louis XIV. 

The regent and Dubois died in 1723. The succeeding 
ministry of the Duke of Bourbon is notable only for the 
marriage of Louis XV to the daughter of Stanislaus Lech- 
zinski (1725), whom Charles XII had made for a brief time 
king of Poland. That minister was overthrown by an ambi- 
tious septuagenarian, Fleury, bishop of Frejus and precep- 
tor to the king, who held the reins from 1726 to 1743. The 
single idea in his whole administration was to economize in 
the finances and maintain peace in Europe. For that end 
he sacrificed the reputation of France and especially the 
interests of her navy, submitting to the exigencies of the 
English. At the death of Augustus II the Poles, by an 
immense majority, elected Stanislaus Lechzinski king, while 
the Elector of Saxony was nominated under the protection 
of Eussian bayonets (1733). The king of France could not 
abandon his father-in-law. Nevertheless the assistance sent 
him was only a mockery and comprised no more than 1,500 
soldiers. Stanislaus escaped with great difficulty from 
Dantzic and returned to France (1734). To make his dis- 
graceful inactivity forgotten, Fleury joined Savoy and 
Spain against Austria, which they wished to expel from 
Italy. This, at least, was true French policy, and it proved 
successful. After the victories of Parma and Guastalla, 
France imposed upon the emperor the treaty of Vienna 
(1738). In place of the kingdom of Poland Stanislaus 
received the duchy of Lorraine, which after his death was 
to revert to the king of France. The Duke of Lorraine 
received Tuscany as indemnity. The Infante Don Carlos 
acquired Sicily with the kingdom of Naples and the king 
of Sardinia gained two Milanese provinces. Some of the 
French ministers wished still more advantageous terms, 



A.D. 1417-1713.] CREATION OF PRUSSIA 395 

but Fleury cared only to make peace rapidly. " After the 
peace of Vienna," said Frederick II, ^' France was the 
arbiter of Europe." She had then just conquered Austria 
in Italy and was on the point of aiding the Turks to win 
Servia by the treaty of Belgrade (1739). Thus Austria was 
at that moment retreating everywhere, in Italy as well as 
on the Danube. The two Seven Years' Wars were to reduce 
her lower still, but to drag down France in her fall. 

Formation of Prussia. — A new power, Prussia, was to 
humble the traditional rivals, Austria and France. In 
1417 Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nuremberg, 
bought from the Emperor Sigismund the margravate of 
Brandenburg, wdiich possessed one of the seven electoral 
votes. Albert, the Ulysses of the North (1469), founded 
the power of his house by decreeing that future acquisitions 
should always remain united to the electorate and that the 
electorate should remain indivisible. In 1618 that house 
acquired ducal Prussia with Konigsberg. In 1624 it 
gained the duchy of Cleves, with the counties of Mark and 
Eavensberg. Thus the state of the Hohenzollerns extended 
from the Me use to the Niemen and formed on the Rhine, 
the Elbe and the east bank of the Vistula, three groups 
separated by foreign provinces. To gain possession of those 
provinces has been, even to our day, the object of Hohen- 
zollern ambition. At the treaty of Westphalia the great 
elector fortified himself upon the Elbe by occupying Magde- 
burg. Then he approached the Vistula by the occupation 
of Further Pomerania (1648). 

Although a member of the League of the Ehine, which 
Mazarin had formed and placed under the protection of 
France, Frederick William supported Holland against 
Louis XIV and founded the reputation of the Prussian 
army by defeating the Swedes at Fehrbellin. His states 
had scanty population. He attracted thither Dutch col- 
onists and many Protestants, expelled by the edict of 
Nantes, who peopled Berlin, his new capital. His son, 
Frederick III, bought from the emperor the title of king 
and crowned himself at Konigsberg (1701). In Branden- 
burg he was still only an elector, for ducal Prussia, which 
formed the new kingdom, was not included in the limits of 
the German Empire. Frederick William I (1713), the 
Sergeant King, created the Prussian army, raising it to 
80,000 men, and spent his life as a drill-master. From 



396 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1714-1743. 

Sweden he acquired nearly the whole of Pomerania, with 
Stettin, and had already meditated the dismemberment of 
Poland. 

Maria Theresa and Frederick II. The War of the Aus- 
trian Succession (1741-1748). — While this Protestant 
power, inheriting the role of Sweden and G-ustavus Adol- 
phus, was waxing strong in the North, Catholic Austria was 
declining. Hemmed in by the Protestants of Germaliy, 
who were upheld by Sweden, by the Turks, who showed a 
remnant of vigor, and by the France of Richelieu, Mazarin 
and Louis XIV, Austria had received many severe blows, 
but had been saved by a great general and set on her feet 
again by fortunate circumstances. Eugene, vanquished at 
Denain, gained a victory over the Turks at Zenta (1697), 
Peterwardein (1716) and at Belgrade (1717). From the 
war of the Spanish Succession Austria obtained the Nether- 
lands, Milan and Naples. The latter was exchanged, later 
on, for Parma and Piacenza. 

When the Emperor Charles VI died in 1740, the same 
year as the Sergeant King, the male line of the Hapsburgs 
became extinct. In order to secure his inheritance to his 
daughter Maria Theresa, Charles had taken every diplomatic 
but not a single military precaution. Hardly had he expired 
when the solemnly signed parchments were torn up and 
live claimants appeared. Some, like the king of Spain and 
the electors of Bavaria and Saxony, demanded the whole of 
Maria Theresa's inheritance. The other two laid claim to 
the provinces which suited them. Then the king of Sar- 
dinia found Milan very attractive and Frederick II was 
greatly tempted by Silesia. Hostilities had already broken 
out between the English and Spaniards, on account of the 
contraband trade which the former carried on in the colo- 
nies of the latter. A general war was grafted upon this pri- 
vate war, since Frederick II had drawn France into alliance 
with him and thus threw England into alliance with Maria 
Theresa. That Prussian prince, hitherto devoted to art and 
literature, suddenly revealed himself as a great king and 
the cleverest military leader of the century. At Molwitz, 
he struck the first blow of the war by a victory over the 
veterans of Prince Eugene, and that victory gave him Si- 
lesia, while the French invaded Bohemia. 

The subsidies of England and the enthusiasm of the 
Hungarians furnished Maria Theresa with unexpected 



A.D. 1744-1756.] CREATION OF PRUSSIA 397 

resources. She abandoned Silesia to Frederick, who at 
once violated his alliance with France, on whom now fell 
the whole weight of the war. The French army, besieged 
in Prague, made a glorious but painful retreat in the dead 
of winter. After Bohemia had been thus retaken, the 
Austrians invaded Bavaria. The frontiers of France were 
exposed to attack. Louis XV, or rather Marshal Saxe, 
had entered the Netherlands with 120,000 men and captured 
many towns. Those successes ceased when it became nec- 
essary to send a large detachment to cover the frontiers. 
Frederick had again taken up arms against Austria and 
invaded Bohemia. The French line on the Ehine was thus 
relieved, the Emperor Charles VII returned to Munich and 
his son made a treaty with Maria Theresa (1745). 

While Frederick was again defeating Austria and impos- 
ing upon her the treaty of Dresden, which put Brussels in 
his power, Charles Edward, the Stuart pretender, landed 
in Scotland to stir up the Highlanders against the house of 
Hanover, which had been seated upon the English throne 
since the death of Queen Anne (1714). The victories of 
Marshal Saxe and the alliance of Russia with France made 
the opposite party ready for peace. Victorious on the con- 
tinent, France had suffered terribly on the sea, where her 
navy had been almost destroyed, and she had lost her 
opportunity of founding in Hindustan that Indian empire 
which Dupleix had begun. By the treaty of Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle (1748) England and France mutually restored their 
conquests, but Silesia was definitely assigned to the king 
of Prussia. 

The Seven Years' War (1756-1763). — France employed 
the peace to reconstruct her marine and extend her com- 
merce. England was annoyed at this prosperity and, with- 
out any declaration of war, began to capture the French 
vessels which were sailing under the protection of treaties 
(1755). It was the interest of France to maintain the ex- 
clusively maritime character of this fresh struggle, but the 
English sought with gold some continental ally, and Fred- 
erick II, rendered uneasy by the unlooked-for good under- 
standing between France and Austria, accepted their 
subsidies. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle he had 
gained the good-will of Silesia by wise measures. He 
began the reformation of the courts and the finances and 
incorporated East Friesland into his kingdom. But his 



398 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1756-1777. 

wit injured his policy. His epigrams wounded the Em- 
press Elizabeth and Madame Pompadour, the favorite of 
Louis XIV. Maria Theresa, who could not see a Silesian 
without weeping, cleverly inflamed the wrath of the offended 
ladies and roused against Prussia the very coalition which 
had threatened her during the preceding war. 

Frederick anticipated his enemies by invading Saxony, 
whose troops he incorporated into his army. Then he 
made his way into Bohemia and defeated the Austrians at 
Lowositz. France threw two armies into Germany, one of 
which forced the Anglo-Hanoverians to capitulate, while 
the other suffered the shameful defeat of Rosbach (1757). 
For many years the king of Prussia, alone save as assisted 
by subsidies from England, waged a heroic war against 
combined Austria, Russia, France and Sweden. The con- 
flict was marked by the battles of Prague, Kollin, Joegern- 
dorf, Zorndorf, Kunnersdorf, Liegnitz, Mindeii and Crevelt. 
In 1761 he seemed at the end of his resources and strength. 
He was saved by the death of the Tsarina, whose successor, 
Peter III, was an admirer of the Prussian hero and made 
haste to recall the Russian troops. A final campaign re- 
stored to him Silesia and disposed Austria for peace. 
France had not been invaded, but she lost Pondicherry, 
Quebec and all her navy. She accepted the treaty of Paris 
(1763). 

The second Seven Years' War resulted, on the one hand 
in the continental grandeur of Prussia and the maritime 
supremacy of England, and on the other, in the humiliation of 
Austria and the decline of France. This war cost the lives 
of 1,000,000 human beings. In Prussia alone 14,500 houses 
were burned. 

After having saved his country and gloriously constituted 
a new nation in Europe, Frederick saved it from misery by 
a wise and vigilant administration. He drained marshes, 
constructed dikes and canals, encouraged manufactures, 
created a new system of landed credit, reorganized public 
instruction and reformed the administration of justice. 

In 1772 he accomplished the dismemberment of Poland, 
as we shall see more fully later on. In 1777 he inflicted 
upon Austria a fresh political defeat by forcing her to re- 
nounce her claims to Bavaria, which she had bought after the 
death of the last elector. Thus Frederick made himself the 
protector of the German Empire against half Slavic Austria. 



A.D. 1688-1757.] COLONIAL POWER OF ENGLAND 399 



XXIV 

MARITIME AND COLONIAL POWER OF ENGLAND 

Eng^land from 1688 to 1763. —The English revolution of 
1688 had as its result: at home the revival of both polit- 
ical and religious liberty and, abroad, the substitution of 
strong and resourceful England for exhausted Holland as 
the adversary of France. The wars of the League of Augs- 
burg and of the Spanish Succession had ruined the French 
navy. The fleets of Holland were at the orders of William 
III, and thus England took possession of the ocean, which 
her merchants covered Avith their ships. William, who died 
in 1702, was succeeded by Queen Anne, the second daughter 
of James II. A zealous Protestant, she brought about the 
union of Scotland and England, under the official title of the 
Kingdom of Great Britain (1707). Until 1710 the Whigs 
were in power. They represented the revolution of 1688 
and consequently were strongly opposed to Louis XIV. So 
Anne x^ursued the policy of her brother-in-law in continuing 
war against France, in which Marlborough won the great vic- 
tories of Blenheim, Oudenarde, Kamillies and Malplaquet. 
The advent of a Tory minister in 1710 brought about the 
peace of Utrecht (1713). On the death of the queen, 
Parliament bestowed the crown upon George of Brunswick, 
Elector of Hanover (1714). 

That prince knew neither a word of English nor a single 
article of the Constitution. He allowed Sir Robert Walpole 
to be the real ruler. Walpole was the leader of the Whigs, 
who had regained a majority in Parliament and who retained 
it until 1742, thanks to the system of bribery openly em- 
ployed by the prime minister. The unscrupulous minister 
was overthrown by the outbreak of the war of the Austrian 
Succession. England in that war acquired not an inch of 
territory but great havoc was caused by the invasion of the 
Pretender, Charles Stuart (1745), and the national debt was 
almost doubled. Already the Great Commoner, William 
Pitt, was attracting the attention of England. In 1757 he 



400 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1727-1763. 

became prime minister. France realized too well his talents 
and his hatred during the Seven Years' War, which he 
directed with an energy that was fatal to both the French 
marine and the French colonies. 

George I died in 1727 and George II in 1760. Both 
were faithful to the compact of 1688. Having neither a 
soldier nor a party, they accepted the ministers which the 
parliamentary majority imposed, so that to change her 
policy Great Britain had only to change her ministers. 
Thus the Whigs or Liberals and the Tories or Conservatives 
came into power through a vote of Parliament and not 
through an insurrection in the street. For this reason, dur- 
ing the last two centuries, England has been able to effect 
many reforms without either the x^retext or the necessity 
of a revolution. George III, who reigned sixty years, 
several times even lost his reason, but governmental action 
was not affected thereby. In London the king reigns, but 
does not govern. He accepts the councillors whom the 
Chambers assign him and signs the decrees which his 
ministers present. He is the wheel which is required to 
set the machine in motion, but he does not command its 
movements, so that by his permanence he represents con- 
servatism, while the ministry, by its mobility, ensures 
progress. 

The English East India Company. — The Seven Years' War 
ruined French affairs in India and delivered America over 
to England. Leaving their colonies to spread freely over 
the rich valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Ohio and the 
Mississippi, the English flung themselves upon India, where 
Dupleix had just revealed how an empire could be created. 
As early as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, an East India 
Company had been organized, which obtained from the 
Grand Mogul the right to traffic in Bengal and which 
founded Calcutta. The French privateers, during the war 
of the League of Augsburg, cost the commerce of Great 
Britain 675,000,000 francs and ruined the company whose 
aggrandizement the emperor of India, Aurangzeb, also was 
arresting. The death of that prince (1707) delivered India 
over to anarchy. The English counted upon profiting 
thereby, when they found a dangerous rival in a company 
founded by Colbert and reconstructed in 1723. Dupleix, 
the director-general of the French trading posts in India, 
transformed his commercial company into a powerful state, 



A.D. 1725-1846.] COLONIAL POWER OF ENGLAND 401 

with fortresses, arsenals and arms, and a vast territory 
extending from Cape Comorin to the Krishna Eiver. For 
many years he governed 30,000,000 Hindus with absolute 
power. But Louis XV abandoned him. Recalled to France 
in 1754, he died in misery. The English took his place, 
copying the organization which he had bestowed upon his 
conquest, and France retained only Pondicherry. 

The empire of the Grand Mogul in the valle}^ of the 
Ganges was in a state of dissolution. The soubahs or vice- 
roys and the nabobs or governors of districts rendered them- 
selves independent after the death of Aurangzeb, so that in 
Bengal, the company, or " The Great Lady of London " as 
the Hindus called it, could easily expand. In the Deccan 
it found brave and active adversaries. The Mussulman 
Haidar Ali, sovereign of Mysore, and his son, Tippoo Sahib, 
from 1761 to 1799 maintained a constant resistance. The 
latter perished defending his capital. From 1799 to 1818 
the English fought against the valiant population of the 
Mahrattas, who half a century earlier had come near sub- 
jugating the whole of India. The Punjaub, the country of 
the Five Bivers, ceased to be independent in 1846. 

2d 



402 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1608-1767. 



XXV 

FOUNDATION OP THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

Origin and Character of the English Colonies in America. 

— The English did not reckon upon India, but India is to 
them now a mine of wealth. They did reckon upon America 
and America is to-day free and their rival. 

Founded by companies or by private individuals who 
fled from the persecutions inflicted in the mother country 
upon dissenters, the English colonies in America, unlike 
the French, were not kept in leading-strings by the home 
government and developed rapidly under the protection of 
religious, civil and commercial liberty. There was no 
party, worsted in the revolutions of England, which did 
not find in America an asylum to receive it. New England 
was the refuge of the Eoundheads and Republicans, Vir- 
ginia of the Cavaliers and Maryland of the Catholics. 
With their creeds the emigrants brought the political ideas 
of old England and held to the administration of public 
affairs by representatives of the x3ersons interested. In all 
these colonies a legislative assembly directed the affairs of 
common weal. But the French in Canada were not even 
allowed to appoint a syndic or mayor of Quebec, " since it is 
not good," Colbert wrote to them, " that any one should speak 
for all." Printing, which was not introduced into Canada 
until 1764, or five years after it was lost by the French, 
existed in Massachusetts as early as 1636, " in order," as it 
was stated, " that the knowledge of our fathers may not be 
buried with them in their tombs." In this national differ- 
ence of colonial organization is to be found the explanation 
of the ruin of the one and of the prosperity of the other. 

The Revolution (1775-1783). — After the Seven Years' 
War the English Ministry, wishing to make the colonies 
bear a part of the expenses of the home government, tried 
first to subject them to a stamp-tax and then to a tax upon 
glass, paper and tea (1767). The colonists, who had no 
representative in the House of Commons, invoked that 



A.D. 1768-1783.] FOUNDATION OF THE UNITED STATES 403 

principle of the English Constitution which provides that 
no citizens are bound to submit to any taxes not voted by 
their representatives. Ninety-six towns pledged themselves 
not to buy any English merchandise so long as their com- 
plaints were unheeded. At Boston in 1774 three cargoes 
of tea were thrown into the water. A few months later 
war broke out. On July 14, 1776, the Continental Con- 
gress at Philadelphia proclaimed the independence of the 
thirteen colonies. They united in a confederation wherein 
each state preserved its political and religious liberty. 

Washington. The Part of France in the War. — Wash- 
ington, a wealthy planter of Virginia, was appointed gen- 
eral. Calm, methodical, persevering, audacious, but never 
rash, never permitting himself to be crushed by a reverse 
nor elated by a success, he was the ideal leader for such a 
conflict. His inexperienced soldiers had to combat veteran 
troops. The German princes sold to the English 17,000 
men to take part in the war. Washington lost New York 
and Philadelphia. But by keeping Howe busy, he enabled 
the insurgents in the north to stop Burgoyne, who came 
down from Canada with an army, and to force his surrender 
at Saratoga (October, 1777). France recognized the inde- 
pendence of the colonies. She sent them, first a fleet, and 
then an army, whose chiefs, Rochambeau and La Fayette, 
aided Washington to compel the capitulation of Cornwallis 
at Yorktown. Spain joined her forces to those of France. 
The secondary navies formed the League of the Neutrals 
for the protection of such vessels as were not carrying con- 
traband of Avar. England bowed under the burden, signed 
the peace of Versailles, which restored several trading posts 
to France, and acknowledged the independence of the 
United States (1783). 

Thus England lost America, with the exception of Canada, 
which she had wrested from France and which she still 
holds. She found a partial compensation for this loss in 
the development of her commerce with the new state. 
Half a century however had not elapsed before the Star- 
Spangled Banner was competing with the British flag in all 
the markets of the world. Moreover the new republic 
had inspired in the ancient mother country a sentiment of 
respect which was akin to fear, because, invulnerable on her 
continent, she could deal a thousand blows before receiving 
one. 



404 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1783-1799. 

Washington won even more honor in peace than in war. 
He might have retained power or have prompted a military 
revolution for his own benefit. But he was the most faith- 
ful servant of the law. He disbanded his troops even 
against their will and became again a plain private indi- 
vidual on the banks of the Potomac. There it was that 
they, whom he had saved on the field of battle, sought him 
in 1789, that he might save them again by his political sa- 
gacity. Twice in succession they elected him President of 
the United States. After that double presidency he per- 
sisted in retiring to his estate of Mount Vernon. Carried 
to the tomb in 1799 he left behind the purest name of 
modern times. 



A.D. 17G1-1772.] DESTRUCTION OF POLAND 405 



XXVI 

DESTRUCTION OF POLAND. DECLINE OF THE OTTO- 
MANS. GREATNESS OF RUSSIA 

Catherine II (1761) and Frederick 11. First Partition of 
Poland (1773). — While a new nation was being born on the 
other side of the Atlantic, an ancient people was dying in 
old Europe under the pressure of two states which had as- 
sumed a place among the great powers only a few years 
before. The real successor of Peter the Great was the wife 
of his grandson, Peter III, the Princess of Anhalt, who 
had her husband strangled and reigned under the name of 
Catherine II. Poland, with her elective and powerless 
royalty, with her anarchical nobility and her religious pas- 
sions, was a sort of anomaly among the absolute monarchies 
of the eighteenth century. Now in politics anomalies can- 
not last. Poland was doomed either to reform herself or to 
perish. Her people and her neighbors alike prevented 
reforms. Hence she fell. 

Catherine II caused her favorite Poniatowski to be elected 
king and signed with Frederick II, who had already pro- 
posed the dismemberment of the country, a secret treaty 
for the maintenance of the Polish constitution. Doubtless 
Catherine hoped to avoid the partition and to reserve the 
entire kingdom for herself alone. When she saw that the 
Polish Diet was determined to persecute dissenters, she 
took the latter under her protection and had two bishops 
arrested whom she sent to Siberia. Forthwith the Catholics 
formed the Confederation of Bar, which adopted a banner 
with the Virgin and the Child Jesus as its standard. The 
Latin cross marched against the Greek cross. The peasants 
murdered their lords. Prom civil war Poland weltered in 
blood. The Prussians entered on the west, the Austrians 
on the south, and the Russians were everywhere. 

France did not feel herself ready to succor Poland. Still, 
she roused the Turks against Russia, but they lost their 
provinces and their fleet, which was burned at Tchesmeh. 



406 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1773-1793. 

Frederick II, uneasy at these victories of the Tsarina, 
recalled her to the affairs of Poland and reminded her of 
the idea of partition, threatening that she would have to 
fight Prussia and Austria in case of refusal. Catherine 
yielded. On April 19, 1773, the partition was accomplished. 
Maria Theresa took Galicia or the northern slope of the, 
Carpathians ; Frederick seized the provinces which he 
needed to unite Prussia to his German states and Catherine 
occupied many Palatinates of the east. 

Treaties of Kainardji (1774) and Jassy (1792). — Having 
satisfied in Poland her own greed and that of Prussia, 
Catherine resumed her projects against Turkey, on which 
she imposed the treaty of Kainardji (1774). Thereby the 
Russians acquired many towns, the right to navigate the 
Black Sea, and a protectorate over Moldavia and Wallachia. 
The Tartars of the Crimea and the Kouban became inde- 
pendent of the Sultan, preliminary to their speedy subjec- 
tion to the Tsar. The amnesty accorded the Greek subjects 
of Turkey revealed that they had a zealous protector in the 
Muscovite prince at St. Petersburg, recognized as the 
champion of the Orthodox Church. In the following year, 
Catherine II put an end to the republic of the Zaperoguian 
Cossacks, whose territories lay between the Russian power 
and the Black Sea. In 1777 she bought his sovereignty 
from the khan of the Crimea, and built Sebastopol. She 
even caused the king of Georgia on the southern slope of 
the Caucasus to accept her protection ; and finally came to 
an understanding with the Emperor Joseph II for the par- 
tition of the Turkish Empire. 

The Divan declared war (1787) and prosecuted it bravely 
for four years. But the Ottomans would have succumbed, 
had not the Tsarina, menaced by the evident hostility of 
Prussia, which had assembled 80,000 men on its eastern 
frontier, and by the unfriendly tone of England and Hol- 
land, consented to the treaty of Jassy. Thereby the 
Dniester was fixed as the boundary of the two empires 
(1792). Turkey, formerly so dangerous to Europe, had just 
been saved for the first time by three Christian states, 
which were unwilling to have the European balance of 
power disturbed for the benefit of a single people. 

Second and Third Partitions of Poland (1793-1795).— 
The Poles paid for the Turks. Warned by the first dis- 
memberment, they had tried to reform their constitution, 



A.D. 1772-1793.] DESTRUCTION OB' POLAND 407 

abolish tlie liberum veto, render the monarchy hereditary 
and share the legislative power between the king, the 
senate and the nuncios or deputies. But Prussia and Aus- 
tria, who were then engaged in stifling the revolution in 
France, had no intention of allowing another revolution to 
be kindled in their rear. A second and third partition, 
effected at an interval of two years, blotted out the country 
of Sobieski. If in later treaties the German people were 
divided up like cattle and their countries like farms to suit 
the convenience of a conqueror, their fate was only the 
repetition of the example furnished by the authors of the 
great Polish spoliation. Austria in 1806 and in 1809, and 
Prussia at Tilsit, endured only what the Poles had suffered 
at their hands. 

Attempt at dismembering Sweden. — Prussia and Russia 
had acquired an appetite by their success and began to pre- 
pare the same fate for Sweden. By a recent treaty they 
pledged themselves to maintain in that country the factions 
which had existed there since the death of Charles XII, 
and which were kept alive by foreign money. The coup 
d'etat of Gustavus III in 1772 and the constitutional act 
of 1789 forestalled the danger. The nobles indeed at 
last assassinated their prince, who was friendly to reform 
and hostile to Russia (1792), but Catherine II, then busy in 
the East, and Prussia, busy in the West, left the Swedish 
kingdom in peace. 



408 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1700-1800. 



XXVII 

PRELIMINARIES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Scientific and Geographical Discoveries. — The eighteenth 
century was for the sciences what the seventeenth had been 
for letters, and the sixteenth for arts and creeds. It was 
a period of renovation. Physics was regenerated by the 
brilliant electrical experiments of Franklin, Volta and Gal- 
vani, who invented the lightning-rod and the voltaic battery. 
So was mathematical analysis by Lagrange and Laplace; 
botany by Linneeus and Jnssien; zoology by Buffon, who 
also introduced geology, while Lavoisier gave to the science 
of chemistry firm foundations. Mankind, when master of 
the laws of nature, wished at once to make them of advan- 
tage. In 1775 vaccination was discovered. In 1783 a 
steamboat ascended the Saone and the first balloon was 
launched into the air. 

At the same time the skilful navigators, Cook, Bougain- 
ville and La Perouse, completed the work of the great sailors 
of the fifteenth century, not through hope of gain or from 
religious sentiment as three hundred years earlier, but in 
the interest of science. 

Letters in the Eighteenth Century.— While the physicists 
were discovering new forces and the navigators new lands, 
the writers for their part were revealing a new world. Lit- 
erature was not, as in the preceding century, controlled by 
art. It had invaded everything and claimed the right to 
regulate everything. The most virile forces of the mind 
seemed directed to the advancement of public welfare. Men 
no longer labored to make fine verses but to utter fine 
maxims. They no longer depicted the whims of society for 
the sake of a laugh, but for the purpose of reforming society 
itself. Literature became a weapon which all, the impru- 
dent as well as the skilful, tried to wield. And by a strange 
inconsistency, those who had the most to suffer from this 
inroad of literary men into the field of politics were the ones 
who applauded it the most. This society of the eighteenth 



A.D. 1700-1780.] PRELIMINARIES, FRENCH REVOLUTION 409 

century, frivolous and sensual as it was, nevertheless cher- 
ished an admiration for mental power. Talent almost took 
the place of birth. 

Three men headed the movement. They were : Voltaire, 
whose whims and passions and vices cannot be forgotten, 
but who fought all his life long for liberty of thought; 
Montesquieu, who studied the reason of laws and the nature 
of governments, who taught men to examine and compare 
existing constitutions in order to seek therein the best, which 
he found in liberty-loving England ; and lastly, Eousseau 
with his Social Contract, wherein he proclaimed the doctrine 
of national sovereignty and universal suffrage. At their 
side the encyclopedists reviewed human knowledge and set 
it forth in a manner often menacing to social order and 
always hostile to religion. Finally Quesnay created the new 
science of political economy. Thus human thought, hitherto 
confined to metaphysical and religious speculations, or ab- 
sorbed in unselfish worship of the Muses, now claimed the 
right to attack the most difficult problems of society. And 
all, philosophers as well as economists, sought the solution 
on the side of liberty. From the school of Quesnay had 
sprung the axiom, " Let well enough alone," just as in poli- 
tics D'Argesson had said, '' Do not govern too much." 

Disagreement between Ideas and Institutions. — Thus the 
mental agitation, formerly excited by the discussion of dog- 
mas, now was produced by wholly terrestrial interests. 
Men no longer sought to determine divine attributes, or the 
limits of grace and free will, but they studied man and 
society, rights and obligations. The Middle Ages and feu- 
dalism, when they expired under the hand of kings, had left 
the ground covered with their fragments, so the most shock- 
ing inequalities and the strangest confusion were to be met 
on every side. Therefore the complaints were vigorous, 
numerous and pressing. 

Men desired that government should no longer be a fright- 
ful labyrinth wherein the most clever must lose his way. 
They meant that the public finances should cease to be 
pillaged by the king, his ministers and the court ; that per- 
sonal liberty should be secured against arbitrary orders of 
arrest or lettres de cachet, and that property should be pro- 
tected from confiscation. They wished that the criminal 
code, still aided by torture, should become less sanguinary 
and the civil code more equitable. 



410 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1700-1780. 

They demanded religious toleration instead of dogma 
imposed under penalty of death ; law, founded on principles 
of natural and rational right, instead of the privilege of a 
few and the arbitrary government of all ; unity of weights 
and measures, instead of the most extreme confusion ; taxes 
paid by every one, instead of the taxation of poverty and 
the exemption of wealth ; the emancipation of labor and free 
competition, instead of monopoly of corporations ; and free 
admission to the public offices, instead of favoritism shown 
to birth and fortune. 

To accomplish this a revolution was necessary and every 
one saw that it was coming. As early as 1719, Fenelon 
exclaimed, " The dilapidated machine still continues to work 
because of the former impetus imparted to it, but it will go 
to pieces at the first shock." 

Reforms effected by Governments. — These words did not 
apply to France alone. They included the whole of abso- 
lutist Europe. If the people did not everywhere understand 
the need of reforms, the princes felt the necessity of under- 
taking them. Bold or clever ministers like Pombal of Lis- 
bon, Aranda at Madrid and Tanucci at Naples, encouraged 
industry, agriculture and science, opened roads, canals and 
schools, suppressed privileges and abuses, and banished the 
Jesuits, who seemed to embody all the evil influences of 
the past. The Grand Duke of Tuscany created provinces 
by transforming pestilential marshes into fertile lands. The 
king of Sardinia allowed his subjects to emancipate them- 
selves from feudal taxes. Joseph II in Austria abolished 
tithes, seignorial rights, forced labor and convents, and sub- 
ordinated the Church to the state. In Sweden Gustavus III 
diminished the church festivals, forbade torture and doubled 
the product of the iron and copper mines. 'We have already 
noted the reforms of Frederick II in Prussia. 

Catherine the Great cultivated the acquaintance of Vol- 
taire, Diderot, D'Alembert, so as to influence public opinion 
through them. She had a magnificent constitution drawn 
up, which, however, she did not put into execution. She 
built schools which remained empty. When the governor 
of Moscow was in despair at the lack of scholars, she wrote 
him : " My dear prince, do not complain that the Russians 
have no desire to learn. If I set up schools, it is not for 
our own sake, but because of Europe which is watching us. 
As soon as our peasants wish to become enlightened, neither 



A.D. 1700-1770.] PRELIMINARIES, FRENCH REVOLUTION 411 

you nor I shall remain in our places." Cardinal Pole had 
expressed the same idea at the beginning of the Reformation : 
" It is dangerous to make men too learned." 

Thus a new spirit of reform was breathing over Europe. 
It was social and no longer a religious reform. It was 
preached by philosophers or economists and not by monks 
or theologians. The princes now too placed themselves at 
the head of the movement, hoping to derive profit therefrom, 
as they had done from the secularizations of church prop- 
erty during the Lutheran and the Anglican Reformations. 
They sought to promote the welfare of their peoples. They 
freed them at the expense of the feudal and ecclesiastical 
aristocracy, from vexatious or onerous burdens, but they 
specially labored all the time to augment their own revenues 
and strength. These princes all said, as did the emperor of 
Austria : '' My trade is to be a royalist." So they preserved 
the discretionary power which feudal anarchy had permitted 
them to grasp, but which the enlarging interests of the peo- 
ple doomed them no longer to retain. 

Thus, at bottom, nothing was changed. Despite this pa- 
ternal solicitude and from default of regular institutions, 
everything still depended on individuals, so that public 
prosperity fluctuated with those who remained its supreme 
dispensers. Hence Spain under Charles IV and Godoy 
again fell as low as under Charles II. The days of the 
Lazzaroni flourished once more at Najjles under Queen Caro- 
line and her minister, Acton. Joseph II disturbed Austria 
without regenerating it, and Catherine II played with re- 
forms for her people. In Prussia alone a great man did 
great things. In France when skilful ministers, who wished 
to do them likewise, were expelled from power, the nation 
undertook to accomplish the reforms itself. 

Last Years of Louis XV (1763-1774). — At the treaty 
of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), France was still the leading mili- 
tary power of Europe. This rank was taken from her by 
the disgraces of the Seven Years' War. Afterwards the 
army had no chance of reviving its ancient renown, for 
French intervention in the affairs of Eastern Europe was 
mostly limited to diplomatic notes and a few volunteers. 
The acquisition of Corsica (1769) under Louis XV was the 
result of a bargain with Genoa, which sold the island for 
40,000,000 francs. The acquisition of Lorraine was only the 
execution of a treaty, for which the occupation of the duchy 



412 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1771-1789. 

for almost a century by French troops liad long since paved the 
way. Hence there was little glory in those territorial gains. 
But the war in America, a few years later, shed some bril- 
liancy upon the navy. While Prussia, Austria and Russia 
were murdering one nation, France had the honor of aiding 
in the birth of another. The American Revolution was 
popular, so France resumed before the end of the century 
something of the proud bearing which Rosbach had taken 
from her. 

At home Louis XV disgraced the monarchy by his vices 
and hastened its ruin by his x3olitical conduct. The expul- 
sion of the Jesuits offended one party and the suppression 
of the parliaments was a blow at another. Frequent and 
arbitrary arrests exasperated the public mind. Public inter- 
ests received a shock in the proceedings of the comptroller- 
general, Abbe Terray, who excused the bankruptcy he 
declared by saying, " The king is the master." Louis 
realized that a terrible expiation was approaching, but he 
thought he himself would escape it. " Things will last quite 
as long as I shall. My successor must get out of the scrape 
as best he can." 

Louis XVI until the Revolution. — This sovereign was the 
most honest and the weakest of men. He abolished forced 
labor and torture. He summoned to the ministry Turgot, 
who could have forestalled the Revolution by reforms or at 
least could have controlled and guided it. But when the 
courtiers complained, he dismissed him, saying, " Only 
Monsieur and I love the people." Necker, the G-enoese 
banker, did not succeed in covering the frightful deficit 
which the expenses of the American war increased. The 
state existed only by loans. Calonne, in the space of three 
years and in time of peace, increased the debt 500,000,000 
francs. An Assembly of Notables, convoked in 1787, could 
point out no remedy. On all sides men clamored for the 
States General. The government, at the end of its resources, 
promised to convoke them. Necker, recalled to the minis- 
try, rendered the decision that the number of deputies from 
the Third Estate should equal that of the other two orders. 
This was the same thing as deciding that by the Third 
Estate alone the great reforms were to be effected. 



A . D . 1789.1 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION 4 1 8 



XXVIII 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
U'vso-iToa) 

Divine Right and National Sovereignty. — In tlie Middle 
Ages, for the purpose of combating feudalism, the jurists 
had again asserted the proposition of the Roman juris- 
consults concerning the absolute power of the prince. The 
Church with her religious authority had sanctioned this 
doctrine, borrowed from Oriental monarchies, which made 
the kings through the religious rite of coronation the direct 
representatives of God on earth. On the other hand, the 
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which had ruled 
the Greek, German, Celtic and Roman world, and which 
even Augustus had made the basis of his power, had never 
been completely forgotten and proscribed. This doctrine had 
been many times reasserted. Thus did in France the States 
General of 1484, in Spain, the Aragonese, who imposed 
upon their kings so harsh an oath. In England it was 
announced before the Tudors and repeated under Henry VI 
by Chancellor Fortescue, who declared that governments 
had been constituted by the peoples and existed only for 
their benefit. Again was it maintained under AVilliam III 
by Locke, who proclaimed the necessity of the common con- 
sent. In the eighteenth century it was set forth by the 
majority of writers. Thus the most ancient system in the 
West was that of national sovereignty. The principle of 
divine right, represented by Louis XIV and James I, had 
come later into the field. Reason and history were against 
it. It was accepted only as an accidental political form 
which had had certain temporary advantages and on that 
account, a temporary validity. 

In the France of 1789, the absolute monarchy by right 
divine found that its faults had reduced it to such a condi- 
tion that it was impossible for it to govern. After royalty 
ceased to live upon the revenues of its own possessions^ 



414 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1789. 

it had set up as an axiom of public law that, for the com- 
mon weal of the state, the Third Estate would contribute 
its goods, the nobility its blood, and the clergy its prayers. 
Now the court clergy prayed but little, the nobility no longer 
formed all the army ; but the Third Estate still remained 
faithful to its functions. It still continued to pay the 
taxes and it paid more every year. As the monarchy in- 
creased in prodigality, the more dependent did it become upon 
the Third Estate, and the more inevitable did it render 
the moment when, tired of paying, the Third Estate 
would demand a reckoning. That awful day of account 
is known as the Revolution of 1789. 

The court wanted the States General to occupy them- 
selves solely with financial affairs and then, as soon as the 
deficit was covered and the debts paid, the deputies to go 
home. But France was suffering from two maladies, one 
financial and one political, from the deficit and from abuses. 
To heal the former, economy was necessary together with 
a new system of taxation. To heal the latter, entire re- 
organization of the power was needed. Royalty had under- 
gone many transformations since the times of the Roman 
emperors. It had been barbarian with Clovis, feudal with 
Philip Augustus, and by right divine with Louis XIV. 
In its latest form it had furnished unity of territory and 
unity of authority, but it must now submit to another 
change. France, with her immense development of in- 
dustry, commerce, science, public spirit and personal 
property, now had interests too complex and needs too 
numerous to trust itself to the omnipotence of a single 
man. She required a guarantee against the unlucky 
hazards of a royal birth or the frivolity of incapable 
ministers. 

The National Assembly until the Capture of the Bastile. 
— On May 5, 1789, the deputies assembled at Versailles. 
The clergy and nobility were represented by 561 persons, 
while the Third Estate, or ninety-six per cent of the popula- 
tion, had 584 or a majority of twenty-three votes. This 
majority was an illusion unless they voted as individuals 
and not as orders. The whole spirit of '89, briefly expressed, 
consisted in establishing equality before the law and guaran- 
teeing it by liberty. Now this spirit had penetrated even 
the privileged classes. Many of their members came and 
joined the deputies of the Third Estate who, assembled in 



A.D. 1789.] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 415 

the common hall, had proclaimed themselves the National 
Constituent or Constitutional Assembly. 

On June 27 the fusion of the three orders was accom- 
plished. This the court tried to prevent, first by closing 
the place of assembly and then by having the king make a 
threatening speech. The sole effect of their opposition was 
to determine the deputies to declare themselves inviolable. 
The court hoped for better results from military action, and 
an army of 30,000 men, in which foreign regiments had 
been carefully incorporated, was stationed around Paris and 
Versailles. The threat was perfectly plain, but the courage 
to strike a great blow was lacking. To this imprudent 
provocation another challenge was added in the exile of 
Necker, the popular minister (July 11). To this challenge 
the Assembly replied by renewing the oath, taken at the 
tennis court, that the representatives would not separate 
until they had given France a constitution. But Paris took 
alarm and flew to arms. Some of the populace marched 
against the troops, encamped in the Champs Elysees, who 
fell back upon Versailles. Others rushed to the Bastile, 
captured it and massacred its commandant. The provost 
of the merchants, the minister Foul on, and the intendant 
Berthier were also slain. The mob began to get a taste of 
blood (July 14, 1789). 

The insensate conduct of the court, which called the 
Assembly together and then wished to get rid of it, which 
threatened but dared not act, which provoked yet knew 
neither how to intimidate nor to coerce, which cherished 
childish hatreds and had no resolution, in only two months 
had caused the reformation to deviate from its pacific 
methods. That fourteenth of July is explained by circum- 
stances and by the state of men's minds. It was, never- 
theless, the first of those revolutionary days, which were 
destined to demoralize the people by habituating them to 
regard the power and the law as a target against which they 
could always fire. 

The Days of October. The Emigration. The Constitution 
of 1791. — "It is a riot," exclaimed Louis XVI when he 
heard the news of the Bastile. " No, Sire," replied the 
Duke de la Rochefoucauld, " it is a revolution." In fact on 
August 4 the Assembly abolished all feudal rights and the 
sale of offices. In September it voted the Declaration of 
Rights, established a single legislative chamber and rejected 



416 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1789. 

the absolute veto power of the king. Then the court re- 
turned to the idea of employing force. It was proposed to 
the king that he should withdraw to Metz and place himself 
in Bouille's army. That measure would have been the 
beginning of civil war. He remained at Versailles and 
summoned thither troops numerous enough to produce un- 
easiness, but too few to inspire any real fear. 

Famine was ravaging France and in Paris men were 
dying of hunger. On October 5 an army of women set out 
for Versailles, imagining that abundance would reign if the 
king were brought back to Paris, his capital. National 
guards, recently organized by La Fayette, accompanied them 
and provoked quarrels in the courtyards of the palace with 
the body-guard. Many of the latter were killed, the queen 
was insulted and the royal dwelling was broken in upon. 
As a final confession of weakness, the king and the Assem- 
bly followed this crowd to Paris, where both were about to 
fall into the hands of the mob. The success of the expedi- 
tion to Versailles showed the ringleaders of the faubourgs 
that thenceforth they could rule everything, Assembly or 
government, by intimidation. 

Sanguinary scenes took place in the country districts also. 
The peasants were not satisfied by destroying feudal coats- 
of-arms and breaking down drawbridges and towers. They 
sometimes also killed the nobles. Terror reigned in the 
castles, as it reigned at court. Already the king's most 
prudent counsellors, his brother, the Count d'Artois, the 
princes of Conde and Conti, the dukes of Bourbon and 
Enghien, the Polignacs, and others of their class had fled, 
leaving him alone in the midst of a populace whose wrath 
they were about to inflame by every means and whose 
fiercest passions they were going to unloose by turning the 
arms of foreign nations against their country. 

Nevertheless the Assembly nobly went on with its work. 
In the name of liberty it removed all unjust discriminations 
from the dissenting sects, the press and industry. In the 
name of justice it suppressed the right of primogeniture. 
In the name of equality it abolished nobility and titles, 
declared all Frenchmen of whatever religion eligible for 
public office, and replaced the ancient provincial boundaries 
by a division into ninety -three departments. Money poured 
out of the kingdom with the emigrants, or was above all 
concealed through the fear of a rising. The Assembly 



A.D. 1789-1790.] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 411 

ordered that 400,000,000 francs in assignats or paper 
money should be issued, secured by the property of the 
clergy, which it ordered to be sold. At the same time the 
law ceased to recognize monastic vows. The cloisters were 
declared to be open and the parliaments were replaced by 
elective tribunals. The sovereignty of the nation having 
been proclaimed, men drew the natural inference that all 
power ought to emanate from the people. Thus the elective 
system was introduced everywhere. A deliberative council 
in the departments, districts and communes was placed by 
the side of the elective council, as beside the king was 
placed the legislative body. And some people were 
already of the opinion that in such a system a hereditary 
king was an absurdity. 

But fhe court did not accept the Constitution. Van- 
quished at Paris on July 14 and at Versailles on October 
6, the nobles fled to Coblentz and there openly conspired 
against France. The nobles, who remained with the king, 
plotted in secret. Louis, who had never a will of his own, 
let them do what they liked. In public he accepted the 
decrees of the AssemJaly. In secret he protested against 
the violence done to his rights. Such a double game has 
always been productive of evil. Nevertheless, there was a 
moment when universal confidence reigned. This was at 
the Festival of the Federation, offered by the Parisians on 
the Champs de Mars to the deputies of the army and of 
the ninety-three departments. From November, 1789, to 
July, 1790, in the villages and in the cities, the inhabitants 
in arms fraternized with the men of the neighboring village 
or city, all uniting in the joy of their new-found country. 
These local federations made common cause and finally 
formed the great French federation which sent, on July 14, 
1790, 100,000 representatives to Paris. The king in their 
presence solemnly swore fidelity to the Constitution. 

But nothing came of this festival. Secret hostilities were 
immediately resumed between the court and the Assem- 
bly. The immediate cause of the trouble was the civil con- 
stitution of the clergy, which, by applying to the Church 
the reform introduced into the state, subjected even curates 
and bishops to election and disturbed the whole exist- 
ing ecclesiastical hierarchy. This was an abuse of power 
on the part of the Assembly, for secular society was not 
competent to regulate the internal organization of religious 
2e 



418 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1790-1791. 

society. The Pope condemned this intervention of the 
state in the discipline of the Church and prohibited obe- 
dience to the new law. The king interposed his veto, 
which he removed only after a riot. But the great ma- 
jority of the clergy refused to take the oath of allegiance 
to the civil constitution. Then schism entered into the 
Church of France. In its train were to come persecutions 
and a frightful war. 

The king, to whose conscience this decree did violence 
just as violence had been done to his affections by the 
measures which the Assembly forced him to take against 
the emigrants, no longer felt himself free. He thought 
that he would find that liberty, denied him in the Tuileries, 
by taking refuge in the camp of Bouille, whence he could 
summon Austria and Prussia to his aid. Arrestecl in his 
flight at Varennes (June 21, 1791), he was suspended from 
his functions by the Assembly. The people on July 17, 
in the Champs de Mars, demanded his abdication. Bailly 
ordered the red flag to be unfurled and the mob to be fired 
upon. On September 14, the king, who up to that time 
had been detained like a prisoner at the Tuileries, accepted 
the Constitution of 1791, which created a single assembly, 
charged with making the laws, and left to the monarch, 
together with the executive power, the right of suspending 
for four years the expressions of the national will by the 
use of his veto. The electoral body was divided into pri- 
mary assemblies, which appointed the electors, and electoral 
assemblies which appointed the deputies. The former com- 
prised the active citizens, that is to say, men twenty-five 
years of age, who were inscribed on the rolls of the national 
guard and paid a direct tax equal to three days' labor. The 
latter were formed by the proprietors or tenants of an 
estate, which brought in at least between 150 and 200 
francs. All active citizens were eligible. 

The National Assembly ended worthily with expres- 
sions of liberty and concord. It proclaimed universal am- 
nesty, suppressed all obstacles to circulation and repealed 
all exceptional laws, hoping thereby to recall the emigrants 
to their country. Among its members the most distin- 
guished were Mounier, Malouet, Barnave, the Lameths, 
Cazales, Maury, Duport, Sieyes, and especially Mirabeau. 
The last named, had he lived, might perhaps have recon- 
ciled royalty Avith the Revolution. It is from Mirabeau 



A.D. 1701.] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 419 

that we have the beautiful formula of the new era, " Right 
is the sovereign of the world." 

The National Assembly prohibited the reelection of 
its members to the new assembly. This was an unwise 
self-abnegation, for the Revolution needed that its veterans 
should hold its standard high and firm above the supersti- 
tious worshippers of the past and the fierce dreamers of 
the future. Thus the way might be paved for the peaceful 
triumph of that new state of mind and institutions which 
has so often been disturbed and compromised by the regrets 
of the former and the rashness of the latter. In spite of 
every mistake the National Assembly was the mother 
of French liberties. Its ideas have reappeared in all the 
French constitutions and are now fundamental in the French 
political state. 



420 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1791. 



XXIX 

INEFFECTUAL COALITION OF THE KINGS AGAINST THE 
REVOLUTION 

(1793-1802) 

The Legislative Assembly (1791-1792). — This Assembly, 
so tame in comparison with its two great and terrible sisters, 
the National Assembly and the Convention, began its ses- 
sions on October 1, 1791, and ended them on September 21, 
1792. Its leaders, the Girondists, Brissot, Petion, Vergniaud, 
Gensonne, Ducos, Isnard and Valaze, labored to overthrow 
the monarchy, although leaving the extremists to initiate 
the Eepublic. In consequence the Republic was founded in 
blood which the Girondists might have founded in modera- 
tion. 

Effect Outside France produced by the Revolution. The 
First Coalition (1791). — To the internal difficulties which 
the National Assembly had encountered, the embarrassment 
of foreign complications was added under the Legisla- 
tive Assembly. The Revolution had awakened in foreign 
lands numerous echoes of its principles and hopes. In 
Belgium, in Italy, in Holland, all along the Rhine and in 
the heart of Germany, in England and even in distant Russia, 
it seemed a promise of deliverance. The French ambassador 
to the court of the Tsar wrote in his memoirs : " Although 
the Bastile certainly was not a menace to any one here, I 
cannot describe the enthusiasm which the fall of that state 
prison and the first tempestuous triumph of liberty excited 
among the merchants, the tradesmen, the burghers and some 
young men of higher rank. Frenchmen, Russians, Germans, 
Englishmen, Danes, Dutchmen, everybody in the streets, con- 
gratulated and embraced each other as though they had 
been delivered from a ponderous chain which pressed upon 
them." 

The Swiss historian, von Miiller, beheld in this victory 
the will of Providence. The philosophers and poets, Kant 



A.D. 1791.] INEFFECTUAL COALITION OF THE KINGS 421 

and Fichte, Schiller and Goethe, then thought the same. 
The latter said, on the evening of Valniy : " In this place 
and on this day a new era for the world begins." Five 
years later he again recalled, in Hermann and Dorothea, 
"those days of sweet hope, when one felt his heart beat 
more freely in his breast, in the early rays of the new sun." 
Thus at first the nations sympathized with France, because 
they understood that for them also Mirabeau and his col- 
leagues had drawn up at Versailles the new charter of 
society. 

But the princes were all the more incensed against this 
Revolution which threatened not to confine itself, like the 
English revolution of 1688, to the country where it had 
broken out. 

As early as January, 1791, the emperor of Germany 
haughtily demanded that the German princes who held 
possessions in Alsace, Lorraine and Franche-Comte should 
be secured in their feudal rights. The emigrants found 
every facility for collecting troops at Coblentz and Worms. 
The Count d'Artois kept up with the emperor, according to 
the king's own confession, negotiations which had culmi- 
nated in a secret convention. The sovereigns of Austria, 
Prussia, Piedmont and Spain, and even the aristocratic rulers 
of Switzerland, bound themselves to place 100,000 men on 
the frontiers of the kingdom (May, 1791). This convention 
had determined the flight of the king (June 20). The 
National Assembly, moved by apprehension rather than 
certain knowledge, had replied by voting a levy of 300,000 
national guards for the defence of the territory. 

At that time, the various wars in which the Northern 
powers were engaged, the Swedes against the Russians, the 
Russians against the Ottomans, the Ottomans against the Aus- 
trians, the Austrians against the Belgians, were nearing their 
end. Prussia had recovered from the anxiety which all those 
armaments in her vicinity had excited. Austria finally put 
down the insurrection of the Belgians, though the hatred of 
foreign domination survived. The peace of Sistova with 
the Ottomans left the Austrian emperor free to act. He and 
the king of Prussia had an interview at Pilnitz, where a 
plan was drawn up for the invasion of France and the res- 
toration of Louis XYI. The famous declaration of Pilnitz 
was made on August 27, 1791. The Legislative Assembly 
assumed a haughty tone with these monarchs. "If the 



422 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1791-1792. 

princes of Germany continue to favor the preparations di- 
rected against the Frencli, the French will carry among 
them, not fire and sword, but liberty. It is for them to cal- 
culate what results may follow this awakening of the 
nations." Louis XVI transmitted to the Powers a request 
for the withdrawal of their troops from the French frontiers. 
They maintained " the legality of the league of the sover- 
eigns, united for the security and the honor of their crowns." 
The king of Sweden, Gustavus III, offered to put himself 
at the head of a sort of royal crusade against the revolu- 
tionists. 

Thus between the two principles the struggle which had 
arisen, first at Versailles and then at Paris, between the 
king and the Assembly, after the defeat of absolutism in 
France, was about to be continued on the frontier between 
France and Europe. The princes who, like the French 
kings, had seized absolute power, were unwilling to aban- 
don it. They entered into a coalition " for the safety of 
their crowns " against the political reform which the States 
General had inaugurated and which they esteemed the com- 
mon enemy. Thus they were about to enter upon that 
frightful war of twenty-three years' duration, which for 
them, except at the very end, was only one long series of 
disasters, but which excited passion as well as heroism, and 
covered France equally with blood and glory. 

The Commune of Paris. The Days of June 20 and August 
10, 1792. The Massacres of September. — The first decrees 
of the Assembly, after the declaration of Pilnitz, dealt a 
blow at the emigrants and the nonjuring priests who, by their 
refusal to take the civic oath, had become sources of trouble 
in La Vendee and Brittany. At first, the king was unwill- 
ing to approve those decrees. The declaration of war, which 
he made against Austria on April 20, 1792, was not sufficient 
to dissipate the fear of secret negotiations on the part of the 
court with the enemy. The rout of the French troops at 
the engagement of Quievrain caused the cry of treason to be 
raised. The constitutional party, which was friendly to the 
king and had at first predominated in the Assembly, could 
not control the municipal council of Paris. A Girondist, 
Pieton, was appointed mayor in preference to La Fayette. 
From that time forth the most violent propositions against 
royalty originated at the city hall. They were repeated 
and still further exaggerated in the famous clubs of the 



A.D. 1792.] INEFFECTUAL COALITION OF THE KINGS 423 

Jacobins and the Cordeliers. They thence spread among 
the people by the thousand voices of the press and especially 
by the journal of Marat, who was beginning his sanguinary 
dictatorship. The masses did not long resist such appeals, 
which seemed justified by the threats from abroad and by the 
inadequate measures taken for defence of the territory. On 
June 20 the Tuileries were invaded. The king, insulted 
to his face, was constrained to put on the red cap. In vain 
did La Fayette demand reparation for this violation of the 
royal dwelling. He himself was proscribed two months later 
and forced to quit his army and France. He had been the 
last hope of the constitutional party. His flight announced 
the triumph of the Republicans. 

The Duke of Brunswick invaded France. His insolent 
manifesto (July 25), threatening death to every armed in- 
habitant who should be captured, and the declaration of 
the Assembly that the country was in danger, fanned still 
further the popular excitement. France responded to the 
patriotic appeal of Paris. But with cries of hatred for 
foreigners Avere mingled denunciations of the court, the 
secret ally of the enemy. On August 10 volunteers from 
Marseilles and Brittany, the people of the faubourgs and 
many companies of the national guard attacked the Tuileries 
and massacred its defenders. The king took refuge in the 
midst of the Assembly, which declared him suspended from 
his functions and imprisoned him and all the royal family 
in the Temple. Four thousand persons perished in the 
tumult. 

As the constitution had been repudiated, a convention 
was summoned to draw up a new one. Before it assembled, 
and when by its approaching end the Legislative Assembly 
had finally lost its little remaining authority, a great crime 
startled France. The prisons of Paris were forced between 
the second and the fifth of September and 966 prisoners 
were butchered. Danton had uttered these sinister words : 
" AVe must terrify the royalists. Audacity ! Audacity ! 
and still more audacity ! '^ A small body of assassins, sup- 
ported by the Commune, had committed this crime, which 
the Assembly and the frightened burghers allowed to be 
perpetrated and which to the grief and shame of France 
was to be repeated. 

Invasion of France. Defeat of the Prussians at Valmy, 
September 20, 1792. — However, hostilities had begun. 



424 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1792-1793. 

The moment had been well chosen by the Powers. All 
their wars in the North and the East were finished. Eng- 
land herself had just imposed peace upon Tippoo Sahib, 
and had acquired half his states. Erance was menaced on 
three sides : on the north by the Austrians ; on the Moselle 
by the Prussians, and in the direction of the Alps by the 
king of Sardinia. The rawness of the troops and the 
mutual distrust between officers and soldiers in the army of 
the North, at first occasioned some disorders, which were 
speedily repaired by the capture of several cities. Savoy 
and Nice were conquered. The Prussians, who had entered 
Champagne, were defeated by Dumouriez at the important 
battle of Valmy and driven back upon the Ehine. Cus- 
tine, assuming the offensive, seized Spires, Worms and 
Mayence, Avhose inhabitants regarded his soldiers rather as 
liberators than as enemies. The attention and forces of 
Prussia had been again directed towards Poland. She 
desired to finish her work of spoliation in that unhappy 
country rather than undertake the dangerous but chivalrous 
task of freeing the queen of Erance. The Austrians, more 
interested in the defence of a princess of their blood, inau- 
gurated at Lille a savage war. Instead of attacking the 
defences, they bombarded the city and in six days burned 
450 houses. Their cruelty was useless. They were forced 
to raise the siege, while, with the army of Valmy, Dumouriez 
won (November 6) the battle of Jemmapes, which placed 
the Netherlands in his power. 

The Convention (1792-1795). Proclamation of the French 
Republic, September 21, 1792. Death of Louis XVI.— 
At its first sitting the Convention abolished royalty and 
proclaimed the Republic. On December 3 it decided that 
Louis XVI must be brought to trial. This decision was 
contrary to the Constitution, which declared the king invio- 
lable and subject to no other penalty than deposition. 

Louis was condemned in advance. The venerable Male- 
sherbes solicited and obtained the honor of defending his 
former master. A young lawyer, Deseze, was the spokes- 
man. " I seek in you judges," he said, " and I behold 
only accusers." He spoke the truth. The situation was 
desperate. England was threatening. The Austrians were 
about to make the greatest efforts and a coalition of all 
Europe was impending. " Let us throw them the head of a 
king as a challenge ! " exclaimed Danton. Louis ascended 



A.D. 1793.] INEFFECTUAL COALITION OF THE KINGS 425 

the scaffold on January 21, 1793. Men had believed that 
the fall of that royal head would create an impassable abyss 
between old France and new France. It was the monarchy 
rather than the individual which they beheaded. Carnot 
wept on signing the death-warrant of Louis. Thus the 
perverted doctrine of the common welfare added another 
crime to history. Again men had forgotten that the 
common weal springs from great hearts, not from the 
executioner. 

The Reign of Terror. — At the news of the death of 
Louis XVI the still hesitating powers declared against 
France. All the French were threatened and civil war 
burst out in La Vendee and Brittany. The Constitution 
everywhere held its own. Carnot organized fourteen 
armies. A revolutionary tribunal was created which pro- 
nounced judgment without appeal and punished with death 
a word, a regret or even the mere name which a man bore 
(March 10, 1793). The desertion of Dumouriez, who for- 
sook his army and escaped to the Austrian camp (April 
4, 1793) increased the alarm and caused revolutionary 
measures to be multiplied. In order that none of those 
who were called traitors might escape, the convention 
abrogated the inviolability of its members. It even re- 
signed a part of its prerogatives by creating in its bosom a 
Committee of Public Safety, which was invested with the 
executive power. In fact suspicion was rife everywhere. 
Robespierre firmly believed that the Girondists wished to 
dismember France and surrender it to foreigners. The 
Girondists thought that Marat, Robespierre and Danton 
wished to make the Duke of Orleans king, then to assas- 
sinate him and found a triumvirate from which Danton would 
expel his two colleagues and reign alone. Each with con- 
viction attributed to his adversaries the most absurd plans. 
From distrust arose panic, that terrible counsellor, and the 
axe hung suspended above and striking upon all heads. 
This system is called The Terror. 

The executioners were dominated by it as much as were 
the victims and were in consequence still more merciless. 

The party of the Mountain, whose leaders were Marat, 
Danton and Robespierre, caused a formal accusation to be 
passed against thirty-one Girondists (June 2), many of whom 
had escaped and were rousing the departments to insurrec- 
tion. Then Caen, Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, and most 



426 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a. d. 1793-1794. 

of the cities of the south declared against the Convention. 
Toulon with the whole Mediterranean fleet was delivered 
over to the English. Conde and Valenciennes fell into the 
hands of the enemy. Mayence, then occupied by French 
troops, capitulated. The enemy invaded both the northern 
and southern frontiers. At the same time the insurgents in 
La Vendee were everywhere victorious and another enemy, 
a frightful famine, was added to the general disorder. 

The cause of the Revolution, defended by less than thirty 
departments, seemed lost. The Convention saved it by dis- 
playing a savage energy. Merlin drew up the law concern- 
ing suspected persons, which cast more than 300,000 persons 
into prison. Barrere declared in the name of the Committee 
of Public Safety : " The Republic is now only an immense 
besieged city. France must henceforth be only one vast 
camp. All ages are summoned by the fatherland to defend 
liberty. The young men will fight. The married men will 
forge arms. The women will make clothes and tents for the 
soldiers. The children will turn old linen into lint. The aged 
will have themselves carried to the public squares to excite 
courage." Twelve hundred thousand men were raised. Bor- 
deaux and Lyons returned to their duty. Bonaparte, then an 
artillery captain, retook Toulon. The Vendeans were driven 
from the gates of Nantes, and Jourdan, who commanded the 
principal army, checked the allies. 

All these achievements were not accomplished without 
terrible intestine commotions. The nobles and priests, pro- 
scribed as suspects, perished in croAvds upon the scaffolds 
which were erected in all the towns. Carrier, Freron, Collot- 
d'Herbois, Couthon, Fouche and Barras were merciless. The 
assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday, who thought 
that by killing him she was killing the Terror (July 13), 
rendered it more implacable. Queen Marie Antoinette, her 
sister Madame Elizabeth, Bailly, the Girondist leaders, the 
Duke of Orleans, General Custine, Madame Roland, Lavoisier, 
Malesherbes and a thousand other illustrious heads fell. 
Then the party of the Mountain fell upon one another. 
Robespierre and Saint Just, supported by the powerful 
society of the Jacobins, first proscribed the hideous parti- 
sans of the anarchist Hebert and then Camille Desmoulins 
and Danton, who had suggested clemency. 

The Ninth of Thermidor, or July 27, 1794. —Not yet could 
peace reign among the remnants of the Mountain. Robes- 



A.D. 1794.] INEFFECTUAL COALITION OF THE KINGS 427 

pierre was threatening many of the fiercest leaders and sev- 
eral members of the Committee whose dictatorship he wished 
to destroy for his own advantage. Among them were Fouche, 
Tallien, Carrier, Billaud-Varennes, Collet-d'Herbois, Vadier 
and Amar. On the ninth of Thermidor these men succeeded 
in decreeing a formal act of accusation against Robespierre, 
Couthon, Saint Just and two other representatives, Lebas 
and the younger Robespierre, who demanded the right to 
share their fate. One hundred of Robespierre's followers 
perished with hini. Two days earlier, this revolution would 
have saved the young and noble Andre C-henier. 

Several of the men who had overthrown Robespierre had 
themselves been extreme partisans of the Terror. But such 
was the force of public opinion that they were compelled to 
represent themselves as favorable to moderation. Thus the 
fall of Robespierre became the signal for a reaction which, 
despite some frightful excesses, nevertheless allowed France 
to take breath. The guillotine ceased to be the means of 
government. Though the parties still continued for a long 
time to proscribe each other, the people at least no longer 
were afforded the hideous spectacle of thirty or forty heads 
every day falling under the knife. 

Glorious Campaigns of 1793-1795. — After the death of 
Louis XVI the coalition of Austria, Prussia and Piedmont 
was joined by England, who readily improved the opportu- 
nity to deprive France of her commerce and her colonies. 
Spain and Naples through family reasons, Holland and Por- 
tugal through obedience to England, and the German Empire 
under the pressure of its two leading states, had also entered 
it. This was to declare almost universal war against France. 
Distance for a time prevented Russia from taking part. 
Denmark and Sweden resolutely maintained neutrality. 

Fortunately for France, Austria and Prussia were mainly 
occupied by Polish affairs and the invading armies frittered 
their strength away in sieges. Instead of fighting for prin- 
ciples, each hostile country hoped to aggrandize itself at the 
expense of France. Thus the English wished to seize or 
destroy the French posts in Flanders. The Austrians de- 
sired the French fortresses on the Scheldt. The Prussians 
counted upon seizing Alsace and the Spaniards aimed at 
Roussillon. But Avhile the allies wasted three months before 
Conde, A'alenciennes and Mayence, and another month in 
preparation for the siege of Dunkirk, Le Quesnoy, Mau- 



428 HISTORY OF MODERN' TIMES [a.d. 1793-1794. 

beuge and Landau, the French vohmteers were getting into 
shape, their armies were being organized and their generals 
were gaining experience without losing their dash. At the 
end of August, 1793, the situation of France, attacked at 
every frontier and torn by civil war, seemed desperate. By 
the end of December she was everywhere victorious. 
Houchard had routed the English at Hondschoote, Jourdan 
had defeated the Austrians at Wattignies, Bonaparte had 
recaptured Toulon, and Hoche had carried the lines of 
Wissemburg. Moreover the tedious Vendean war was 
drawing to a close. 

A few months afterwards the victory of Fleury gave 
France the Netherlands. The Spaniards were driven back 
beyond the Pyrenees, the Piedmontese beyond the Alps, the 
imperialists and the Prussians beyond the Rhine, and dur- 
ing the winter Pichegru fought his way into Holland. 
These reverses induced Spain and Prussia to abandon the 
coalition. Spain, at the mercy of a shameless court, was 
appalled at the sound of arms. Prussia needed repose in 
order to assimilate Poland, which had been finally dis- 
membered. 

England, Austria, Sardinia and the South German states 
remained in line. Russia entered their league and sent her 
vessels to assist England in starving the French coasts and 
in building an immense British colonial empire. The sub- 
sidies from the English aristocracy fed the war and pre- 
vented defections of the allies. While men aimlessly cut 
one another's throats on the Rhine, the English fleets scoured 
the seas and seized the vessels and trading posts of France 
and of her ally, Holland. 

On land the young volunteers had quickly learned how 
to fight the veterans of Frederick II. But maritime war 
demands other tactics and long practice. All the brilliant 
naval staff which had combated England in the American 
Revolutionary War had emigrated. The French fleets had 
no sea-captains and were always worsted in sea-fight. In 
1794, Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, formerly captain of a 
merchantman, with twenty-six vessels manned by peasants 
attacked an English fleet of thirty-eight sail, in order to 
protect the disembarkation of an immense convoy of grain. 
The convoy passed, a part of France was saved from famine, 
but the French fleet lost seven ships. One of them, Le 
Vengeur, rather than strike its flag, went to the bottom, its 



A.D. 17'J5.] INEFFECTUAL COALITION OF THE KINGS 429 

crew singing the Marseillaise. Martinique, Guadaloupe and 
even Corsica, which could not be defended, were seized by 
the English. 

Constitution of the Year III. The Thirteenth of Vende- 
miaire or October 5, 1795. — But the (.'onvention, issuing 
victorious from the tumults which followed the overthrow 
of K-obespierre, repealed the democratic Constitution of 
1793, which had not yet been put in execution, and in- 
trusted the legislative power to two councils, the Five 
Hundred and the Ancients. It confided the executive 
power to a Directory of five members, one of whom was to 
be changed each year. At first the Convention had central- 
ized everything. Now everything was divided. The legis- 
lative power was to have two heads, which is not too many 
for good counsel, but the executive power was to have five, 
which is unfavorable to action. Thus they hoped to escape 
dictatorship and to create a moderate republic. The result 
was a republic feeble and doomed to anarchy. The local 
assemblies accepted the Constitution, but disorders broke 
out in Paris. The royalists, who had so often suffered from 
sedition, committed the error of employing it in their turn. 
They carried with them many companies of the national 
guard, who marched in arms upon the Convention. Barras, 
whom the Assembly had appointed general-in-chief, charged 
Napoleon Bonaparte with its defence. That fifth of 
October began the successes and assured the triumph of 
the young officer, whose astute management overcame 
the superiority of numbers. Three weeks later the Con- 
vention declared its mission at an end (October 26). 

In the midst of civil commotions and foreign victories, 
the Convention had pursued its political and social reforms. 
In order to strengthen the unity of France it decreed 
national education. It founded the Normal School, several 
colleges, primary and veterinary schools, schools of law and 
medicine, the Conservatory of Music, the Institute and the 
Museum of Natural History. It also established unity of 
weights and measures by the metrical system. By the sale 
of national property it enabled many to become proprietors. 
By the creation of the public ledger, it founded the state 
credit. By the invention of the aerial telegraph the orders 
of the central government could be transmitted rapidly to 
the very frontiers, and establishment of museums revived 
taste for the arts. The Convention wished to have the in- 



430 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1795- 

firni and foimdlings brought together and cared for by the 
country. The last act of these terrible legislators was a 
decree that the death penalty should be abolished after the 
general pacification. 

The Directory (1795-1799). — Before it dissolved the Con- 
vention decreed that two-thirds of the members of the Coun- 
cil of the Ancients and of the Council of the Five Hundred, 
should be chosen from the members of the Convention. 
Thus the latter formed 'the majority in the Council. They 
elected as directors Lareveillere-Lepeaux, Carnot, Eewbell, 
Letourneur and Barras. These five directors established 
themselves in the palace of the Luxembourg. The situa- 
tion was difficult. The local elective councils, which were 
to administer the departments, the cantons and the com- 
munes, were doing nothing or doing it badly. This paraly- 
sis of authority was compromising all the interests of the 
country. The treasury Avas empty. The paper currency 
was completely discredited. Commerce and industries no 
longer existed. The armies lacked provisions, clothing and 
even ammunition. But three such years of war had devel- 
oped soldiers and generals. Moreau commanded the army 
of the Rhine and Jourdan that of Sambre-et-Meuse. Hoche 
kept watch over the coasts of the ocean to defend them 
against the English and to pacify Brittany and La Vendee. 
And in conclusion, he who was destined to eclipse them all, 
Bonaparte, then twenty-seven years of age, had just won on 
October 5 the command of the Army of the Interior, which 
he soon afterwards exchanged for that of the Army of Italy. 

Campaigns of Bonaparte in Italy (1796-1797). — On pla- 
cing hi'mself at their head, he found his troops pent up in 
the Alps, Avhere they Avere struggling painfully Avith the 
Sardinian troops, Avhile the Austrians were threatening 
Genoa and marching on the Var. With the eye of genius 
Bonaparte chose his field of battle. Instead of Avearing out 
his forces amid sterile rocks Avhere no great blows could be 
struck, he flanked the Alps, Avhose passage he might have 
forced. By this skilful manoeuvre he placed himself be- 
tAveen the Austrians' and the Piedmontese, cut them in 
pieces, defeated them in succession, drove the former into 
the Apennines and the latter back upon their capital, and 
thrust the sword into the loins of the Sardinian army until 
it laid down its arms. Thus delivered from one enemy, he 
turned upon the other. 



1797.] INEFFECTUAL COALITION OF THE KINGS 431 

In vain did the Austrian Beaulieu, alarmed by his de- 
feats at Montenotte (April 11), Millesimo (April 14), Dego 
(April 15), and Mondovi (April 22), retreat with utmost 
speed. Bonaparte followed him, overtook him and crushed 
him. At Lodi the Austrians tried to stop him. The French 
fought their Avay across the river over a narrow bridge and 
won a magnificent victory. Beaulieu was succeeded by 
Wurmser, Austria's best general, with a larger and more 
veteran army. It disappeared like the first at Lonato and 
Castiglione (August 3 and 5), and Bassano (September 8). 
Alvinzi, who replaced Wurmser, was routed at Areola 
(November, 1796) and at Rivoli (January, 1797). The 
Archduke Charles succeeded no better. All the armies 
and the generals of Austria dashed themselves in vain 
against less than 40,000 men led by a general eight and 
twenty years of age. On the flag which the Directory pre- 
sented to the Army of Italy, were inscribed these words : 
"It has taken one hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, 
captured seventy flags, five hundred and fifty siege guns, 
six hundred field guns, five pontoon equipages, nine vessels, 
twelve frigates, twelve corvettes, eighteen galleys, has given 
liberty to the peoples of Northern Italy, sent to Paris the 
masterpieces of Michael Angelo, Guercino, Titian, Paul 
Veronese, Correggio, Albani, Caracci, and E-aphael, gained 
eighteen pitched battles, and fought sixty-seven com- 
bats." 

While these marvellous campaigns of Italy were going 
on, Jourdan had allowed himself to be beaten by the Arch- 
duke Charles at Wiirzburg, and Moreau, left unguarded, had 
found himself obliged to retreat into Alsace. His retreat 
was as glorious as a victory ; for he took forty days to 
march a hundred leagues without allowing himself to 
be attacked. Moreover, the Army of Italy had won for 
France as a boundary that great river which for nearly a 
thousand years, had separated Gaul and Germany. The 
treaty of Campo Formio, signed by Bonaparte (October 
17, 1797), restored to France the Rhine as her frontier. 
Beyond the Alps she possessed a devoted ally in the new 
Cisalpine republic founded in Lombardy. 

Egyptian Expedition (1798-1799). Second Coalition (1798). 
Victory of Zurich. — Austria had laid down her arms ; but 
the English, unassailable in their island, could not consent to 
allow France so many conquests. Therefore the war with 



432 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1798-1799. 

them continued. To strike them to the heart by destroy- 
ing their commerce, the Directory despatched to Egypt an 
expedition commanded by Bonaparte. From the banks of 
the Nile he hoped to reach England in India and over- 
throw her empire there. At the battles of the Pyramids 
and Mount Tabor, he scattered the Mamelukes and the 
Turks before him. But the loss of the French fleet at 
Aboukir had deprived him of siege guns and caused his 
siege of Saint Jean d'Acre to fail. After that disaster he 
could accomplish nothing important by remaining in Egypt. 
Destroying another Turkish army at Aboukir, he quitted 
his conquest and returned to France. 

During his absence the weakness of the Directory had 
permitted all the fruits of the peace of Formio to be lost. 
The spectacle of French internal disorganization and the 
absence of Bonaparte with the best French army, which 
seemed lost in the sands of Egypt, induced the continental 
Powers to lend an ear to the persuasions of Pitt. As early 
as 1798 that great and hostile minister began to form a sec- 
ond coalition against France. It was composed of Eussia, 
where Paul I had just succeeded to Catherine II, of that 
part of Germany which was under Austrian influence, of the 
emperor, who could not console himself for having lost Mi- 
lan, of Naples, Piedmont and Turkey. The alliance of the 
latter power with France, after lasting three centuries, had 
been ruptured by the expedition to Egypt. The Barbary 
States offered their assistance against the nation which 
seemed to have become the foe of the Crescent. 

France, without either money or commerce, no longer borne 
on by the patriotic impulse of '93 and not yet possessing 
the military enthusiasm and strong organization of the em- 
pire, found herself exposed to the most serious dangers. 
Still the first operations were fortunate ; Joubert drove the 
king of Sardinia from Turin, and Championnet proclaimed at 
Naples the Parthenopeian Kepublic. But the coalition had 
360,000 soldiers against 170,000 Frenchmen. An Anglo- 
Eussian army landed in Holland. The Archduke Charles 
vanquished Jourdan at Stockach, and laid seige to Kehl, 
opposite Strasburg. Scherer at Magnano, Macdonald at Tre- 
bia, and Joubert at Novi lost Italy, which was invaded by 
100,000 Austro-Eussians. 

The victory of Massena at Zurich and that of Brune at 
Bergen saved France from invasion. 



A.D. 1799.] INEFFECTUAL COALITION OF THE KINGS 433 

Internal Anarchy. The Eighteenth of Brumaire, or Novem- 
ber 9, 1799. — At home the struggle between parties was 
beginning again with fury, but fortunately with less 
bloodshed. After the overthrow of Robespierre the Revo- 
lution seemed almost desirous of retracing its steps. The 
emigrants returned in crowds and the royalists showed them- 
selves everywhere. The condemnation of several hot-headed 
republicans, who preached the abolition of property, and the 
success of the " whites " in the elections, thereby giving the 
monarchists the majority in the councils, increased their 
hopes. The pretender, Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI, 
believed that he was on the point of being recalled and was 
already formulating his conditions. 

To the parliamentary coup d'etat which was preparing, the 
Directory retorted by a coup d'etat of the government and 
the army. It proscribed two of its members : Carnot, who 
was unwilling to employ violence against the royalists, and 
Barthelemy, who was royalist at heart. It sentenced fifty- 
three members of the two Councils to deportation. Among 
them were Pichegru, Barbe-Marbois, Boissy-d'Anglas, Por- 
talis and Camille Jordan (September 4, 1797). On May 11, 
1798, there was another coup d'etat, but this time it was 
directed against the deputies, called "patriots," whose elec- 
tions were annulled. The legislative body, thus attacked by 
the Directory, struck back on June 18, 1799, and three direc- 
tors were forced to resign. In the Councils, at Paris, in the 
armies, men talked openly of overthrowing the Constitution, 
which by dividing the executive power compelled it to be 
by turns weak or violent, but never strong or apparently 
durable. 

Thus weary of the anarchy in which a feeble and nndig- 
nified government let her exist, France accepted Bonaparte 
as her leader on his return from the East with the prestige 
of fresh victories. Sieyes, one of the directors, who wished 
a new constitution which he had long been meditating to be 
accepted, thought he had found in the general a useful tool. 
Bonaparte did not deprive him of his illusions, but accom- 
plished the military revolution of the eighteenth of Bru- 
maire, or November 9, 1799, which resulted in the fall of the 
Directory and the creation of the Consulate. 

The eighteenth of Brumaire was another national day 
crowned by an act of violence. Royalists and republicans, 
generals and magistrates, priests and laymen, had employed 

2.F 



434 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1799. 

alternately clnring the last ten years conspiracies or weapons 
to modify or overthrow the law. 

Another Constitution. The Consulate. — In order to 
strengthen the executive power the new chiefs of the state 
were reduced from live to three, and their functions were 
prolonged for ten years. The three consuls were Bonaparte, 
Sieyes and Eoger Ducos. 

From the first Sieyes recognized that he had given him- 
self a master. Bonaparte rejected his plans and had a Con- 
stitution adopted, known as that of the year VIII, which 
placed in his hands under the title of First Consul the most im- 
portant prerogatives of authority. The two associate consuls, 
Cambaceres and Lebrun, had only the right of consultation. 

According to the new Constitution, the laws, prepared 
on the order of the consuls by the council of state, were 
discussed by the Tribunate and adopted or rejected by 
the legislature. The Tribunate expressed its opinions, 
which the government heeded or not as it pleased, concerning 
existing or proposed laws, abuses to be corrected, and im- 
provements to be introduced. When after examination by 
the tribunes a proposed law was submitted to the legislative 
body, it was discussed by three speakers from the Tribunate 
and by three Councillors of state. The members of the leg- 
islative body had no right to participate in the debate. 
They voted in silence. 

The Senate, composed of eighty members appointed for 
life, was charged with the maintenance of the Constitution, 
the judgment of all acts contrary to the organic law, and 
the nomination from the national list of all members of the 
Tribunate and of the legislature. All Frenchmen twenty- 
one years of age and inscribed on the public registers were 
electors. The electors of each communal district chose a 
tenth of their number to draw up from among themselves a 
list of communal notables, and from this list the First Con- 
sul selected the public functionaries of each district. The 
notables placed on the communal list named a tenth of 
their number to form the departmental list, and from this 
the First Consul selected the functionaries of the depart- 
ment. The persons named on the departmental list drew 
up the national list, which included one-tenth of their num- 
ber, and from which the national functionaries were chosen. 
Also from this third list of notables the Senate was to name 
the members of the Tribunate and the legislative body. 



A.D. 17<tit.] INEFFECTUAL COALITION OF THE KINGS 435 

Thus the assemblies which discussed and passed the laws were 
the result of four successive elections. This Constitution 
was submitted to a plebiscite or popular vote. There were 
cast 3,011,007 votes in favor of its adoption and 1562 against it. 

Bonaparte was known as a great general. He showed 
himself a still greater administrator. His first care was to 
reestablish order. He himself proclaimed oblivion of the 
past and endeavored to reconcile all parties. He declared 
the former nobles eligible to public office, recalled the later 
exiles, reopened the churches and permitted the emigrants 
to return. The country districts w^ere cleared of bandits. 
In order to found an administration which should be at once 
firm and enlightened, he constituted the departments after 
the pattern of the state itself. The departments had been 
administered by elective directories over wdiich the central 
power had little influence, and wdiich worked badly or not 
at all. He replaced them by a Prefect w^ho depended 
directly upon the Minister of the Interior, and he con- 
centrated all the executive authority in the hands of that 
official. At his side he placed the Council of the Pre- 
fecture, a sort of departmental council of state, and the Gen- 
eral Council, a sort of legislature. The sub-prefect had also 
his District Council. The mayor of each commune had a 
Municipal Council. Each district or sub-prefecture had a 
civil tribunal and for the finances a special receiver. Each 
department had a criminal tribunal and a receiver-general. 
Tw^enty-seven appellate tribunals were instituted over the 
land. A Court of Cassation or Supreme Court of Appeal 
maintained the uniformity of jurisprudence. A commission, 
composed of Portalis, Tronchet, Eigot de Preameneu and 
de Malleville and often presided over by Bonaparte himself, 
prepared the civil code, which was discussed by the council 
of state, and which the legislative body, after full examina- 
tion by the great judicial bodies and the Tribunate, adopted 
in 1804. One of the most useful creations of this period 
was the Bank of France, w^hich has rendered great services 
to the country in times of difficulty. 

Marengo. Peace of Lune'ville and of Amiens. — The 
royalists, disappointed in their hopes, raised the standard 
of insurrection in the west. By energetic measures Bona- 
parte stifled this new civil war. On the frontiers, especially 
in the direction of Italy, serious dangers menaced the 
Republic. The situation of 1796 seemed repeated. Instead 



436 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1800-1802. 

of flanking the Alps, as on the former occasion, Bonaparte 
crossed them by the Pass of St. Bernard and fell upon the 
rear guard of Melas who, master of Genoa, was threatening 
to cross the Var. By the single battle of Marengo he re- 
conquered Italy (June 14, 1800). This dazzling success and 
the victory of Moreau at Hohenlinden forced Austria to 
sign the peace of Luneville (February 9, 1801). 

England alone, still governed by Pitt the mortal enemy 
of Prance, obstinately persisted in war. But men's eyes 
were opening. They began to see why that one power, 
which gained by the war in which all the other powers 
were the losers, refused to lay down arms. The ideas, 
which twenty years earlier had armed against England the 
northern Powers, again made their appearance in the 
councils of the kings. The Tsar, the kings of Prussia, 
Denmark and Sweden, whose commerce the English were 
molesting, renewed the League of the Neutrals (December, 
1800). England replied by placing an embargo in her 
ports on the vessels of the allied states, and Nelson forcing 
the passage of the Sund threatened Copenhagen with bom- 
bardment. This audacious act and the assassination of 
Paul I broke up the League of the Neutrals. The new 
Tsar, Alexander I, renounced the policy of his father, 
and France found herself left to defend the liberty of the 
seas alone. The capitulation of Malta after a blockade of 
twenty-six months and the evacuation of Egypt by the 
French army seemed to justify the x^ersistence of England; 
but she was staggering under a debt of over $2,000,000,000, 
enormous even for her. The misery of her laboring classes 
produced bloody riots. For a long time the Bank of Lon- 
don had paid out no coin. Moreover the French marine 
was springing into new life. At Boulogne immense prep- 
arations were under way for an invasion of England. 
Just as the peace of Luneville was signed Pitt fell from 
power. A few months later the new ministry concluded 
with France the preliminaries of the peace which was 
signed at Amiens, March 25, 1802. The acquisitions of 
France and the republics which she had founded were 
recognized. England restored the French colonies, gave 
back Malta to the Knights, and the Cape to the Dutch. 
She retained only the Spanish Island of Trinidad, and 
Ceylon, which completed her establishment in India. 
Peace was reestablished on all the continents and on all 
the seas. The coalition of the kings was vanquished ! 



A.D. ]802.j GREATNESS OF FRANCE 437 



XXX 

GREATNESS OP FRANCE 
(1803-1811) 

The Consulate for Life. — The treaty of Amiens carried 
the glory of Bonaparte to the zenith. For the second time 
he had given peace to France. Egypt was indeed lost and 
an expedition, intended to make the blacks of San Domingo 
recognize the authority of France, was doomed to failure. 
But those distant misfortunes hardly awakened an echo at 
home. They were forgotten as men beheld parties calmed 
and order reviving everywhere under the firm, skilful hand 
of the First Consul. 

He renewed the powerful impulse imparted by Colbert 
to manufactures. Commerce was encouraged, the finances 
were reorganized, the roads and ports repaired, the arsenals 
stocked. At Paris he threw three bridges across the Seine. 
Between the valleys of the Seine and the Oise he dug the 
canal of Saint Quentin. Between France and Italy he 
opened the magnificent road of the Simplon, and founded 
hospices on the summits of the Alps. The civil code was 
being discussed under his supervision, and he was already 
elaborating the project of complete organization of national 
education. A marvellous activity and an unprecedented 
ability to labor made him see everything, understand every- 
thing, do everything. Arts and letters received from him 
precious encouragement. For the purpose of rewarding 
civil and military services, talent and courage, he instituted 
the Order of the Legion of Honor, a glorious system of 
social distinction which the spirit of equality could accept. 
A stranger to the hatreds of the past ten years, he welcomed 
the exiles, recalled the priests, and signed the Concordat 
with the Pope. He tried to efface petty animosities and to 
form only one great party, that of France. Finally, while 
he harnessed the Revolution to his chariot, he preserved its 
principles in his civil code and thereby rendered it im- 
perishable. 



438 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1803-1804. 

But he could not disarm all his enemies. Every day 
fresh conspiracies were formed against his life. The in- 
fernal machine of the Kue Saint Nicaise came near de- 
stroying his life. In order, as he himself said, to make his 
enemies tremble even in London, he caused the execution 
of Georges Cadoudal who had come to Paris to assassinate 
him. He exiled Moreau and imprisoned Pichegru, who 
strangled himself in his cell. Seizing the Duke d'Enghien 
contrary to international law at the castle of Ettenheim in 
the margravate of Baden, he handed him over to a military 
commission which condemned and executed him that same 
night in the moat of Vincennes (March 20, 1804). 

On August 2, 1802, four months after the treaty of Amiens, 
he was appointed consul for life. In order to bring institu- 
tions into harmony with its new powers, the Constitution 
was remodelled. The lists of notables were replaced by. 
electoral colleges for life, and important changes were made 
to the advantage of the Senate. Invested with the constit- 
uent power, this body had the right of regulating by 
senatorial decrees whatever had not been provided for in 
fundamental laws, to suspend the jury and to dissolve -the 
legislature and the Tribunate. But organic senatorial de- 
crees were to be previously discussed in a privy council, all 
of whose members were to be selected each time by the First 
Consul. 

Bonaparte Hereditary Emperor (May 18, 1804). — Ad- 
miration for a transcendent genius, gratitude for great ser- 
vices, and a crying need of order after so many agitations, 
caused these dangerous innovations to be accepted. A few 
members protested in the Tribunate. But the murmurs of 
Daunou, Lanjuinais, Chenier, Carnot and Benjamin Con- 
stant, like the opposition of Madame de Stael and Chateau- 
briand, were lost in the splendor which surrounded the new 
power. Finally the Senate invited the First Consul to rule 
the French Eepublic with the title of hereditary emperor 
as Napoleon I. The mighty master of France was unable 
to master himself and to restrain his ambition. 

More than three and a half million voters declared in 
favor of the empire. Pope Pius VII himself came to Paris 
and crowned the new Charlemagne on December 2, 1804. 
To give the throne which had just been set up the bril^ 
liancy of the old monarchies and to unite under the same 
titles the men of the Revolution and those of the old regime, 



A.D. 1805.] GREATNESS OF FRANCE 439 

Napoleon created a new nobility of counts, dukes and princes. 
He appointed eighteen titled Marshals : Berthier, Murat, 
Moncey, Jourdan, Massena, Augereau, Bernadotte, Soult, 
Brune, Lannes, Mortier, Ney, Davoust, Bessieres, Keller- 
man, Lefevre, Perignon and Serrurier, with large endow- 
ments in money and lands. Again were seen officers of 
the court, its great dignitaries, its chamberlains and even 
its pages. 

Napoleon was president of the Italian Bepublic. Hav- 
ing become emperor in. France, he became king of Italy 
(March 18, 1805). That fair country, enervated by a servi- 
tude of four or five centuries' duration and by divisions 
which dated from the fall of the Roman Empire, was then 
unable either to defend itself, or of itself to unite. If the 
hand of France were withdrawn, either Austria would seize 
it once more or it would fall back again into its eternal 
rivalries. "You have only local laws," said Napoleon to 
the deputies of the Cisali^ine Republic ; " you need general 
laws." That is to say, they were only municipalities, hos- 
tile to each other, and ought 'to become a state. The unity 
which Napoleon I wished to give the inhabitants by first 
making them French, Napoleon III afterwards assured 
them by leaving them Italians. 

Beginning with 1803 the emperor was Mediator of the 
Helvetian Republic. He took advantage of the right con- 
ferred upon him by this title to give Switzerland a con- 
stitution which, by maintaining peace between the rival 
cantons, ultimately led the Swiss to form a real nation with- 
out destroying local patriotism. Six new cantons, Argovie, 
Thurgovie, Saint Gall, Grisons, Vaud and Tessin, were added 
to the thirteen old cantons, and all unjust privileges disap- 
peared. After the proclamation of the empire. Napoleon 
made no change in his relations toward Switzerland, but 
took many Swiss regiments into his service. 

Third Coalition. Austerlitz and the Treaty of Presburg 
■(1805). — Pitt returned to the ministry on May 15, 1804. 
Thus the war party again obtained the upper hand. In 
fact England could not bring herself to evacuate Malta 
despite her word pledged at the treaty of Amiens, and 
without declaring war she seized 1200 French and Dutch 
ships. Napoleon replied to this provocation by invad- 
ing Hanover, the patrimony of the English king, and 
by immediately setting on foot preparations to cross the 



440 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1805. 

Straits of Dover with an army. The American Fulton 
offere'd the means for crossing by the steamboat which he 
had constructed, but his proposals were refused. England 
was in danger. Nelson himself failed against the Boulogne 
flotilla which, should the tempest drive away the English 
vessels for a few days or should a calm render them motion- 
less, was ready to transport 150,000 men on its thirteen hun- 
dred boats. Admiral Villeneuve with the Toulon fleet might 
have protected the passage, but he lacked the daring. Through 
fearing a defeat in the Channel, he suffered a terrible disas- 
ter a few months later on the coast of Spain at Trafalgar 
(October 21, 1805). 

England had warded off the peril by dint of gold. She 
subsidized a third coalition, which Sweden, Russia, Austria 
and Naples entered. Prussia held back and awaited de- 
velopments. The emperor was in the camp at Boulogne 
when he learned that 160,000 Austrians, preceding a Rus- 
sian army, were advancing under Archduke Charles upon 
the Adige and under General Mack on the Rhine. He was 
compelled to postpone his invasion. Napoleon immediately 
broke up his camp at Boulogne, sent the grand army post 
haste to the Rhine and, while Massena held back the 
archduke's vanguard, flanked Mack, shut him up in Ulm 
and forced his surrender (October 19). Two days later the 
destruction of the French fleet at Trafalgar forced him to 
renounce the sea, where he could not cope with his enemy. 

Still he controlled the land and was already planning 
the ruin of the English by closing the continent to them. 
On November 19, he entered Vienna, and on December 2, 
he won the battle of Austerlitz over the emperors of 
Austria and Russia. The remnants of the Russian army 
returned to their country by forced marches. Austria at 
the treaty of Presburg ceded the Venetian states with 
Istria and Dalmatia, which Napoleon united to the king- 
dom of Italy. She also surrendered the Tyrol and Austrian 
Suabia to the Dukes of Wlirtemberg, Bavaria and Baden. 
The first two princes he made kings and the third a grand 
duke. Thus by the cession of Venice Austria lost all 
influence over Italy, and by that of the Tyrol all influence 
over Switzerland. The proposed cession of Hanover to 
the court of Berlin in exchange for Cleves and Neuchatel, 
was designed to remove Prussia also from the French 
frontier. 



A.D. 1806.] GREATNESS OF FRANCE 441 

The Confederation of the Rhine and the Vassal States of 
the Empire. — The emperor dreamed of inaugurating a new 
European system. He wished to be the Charlemagne of 
modern Europe. He had conceived a plan of empire which 
was not completed until after Tilsit. Still, we may present 
it now as a whole, so as to escape returning to it again. 
Kesuming the idea which Mazarin had cherished of a 
league among the states of western Germany, he organized 
after Austerlitz the Confederation of the Ehine. The old 
Germanic empire was dissolved after a duration of ten 
centuries. Francis II, reduced to his hereditary domains, 
abdicated the title of Holy Eoman Emperor to assume that 
of emperor of Austria. The 370 petty states, which 
shared among them the German soil and maintained 
permanent anarchy, were reduced to thirty or forty. 
Thereby the more powerful states were enlarged and some 
of their princes received from France the name and the 
dignity of kings. They were united under the protection 
of Napoleon into a federated state, from which the half- 
Slav states, Prussia and Austria, were excluded. 

The new diet which sat at Frankfort was divided into two 
colleges. The College of Kings comprised the kings of 
Bavaria and Wlirtemberg, the prince primate, ex-elector of 
Mayence, the Grand Dukes of Baden, Berg and Hesse- 
Darmstadt. The College of Princes included the Dukes of 
Nassau, Hohenzollern, Salm and others. The nobles, whose 
possessions were enclosed within the territories of these 
divers princes and whom former emperors had favored so as 
to weaken their greater vassals, were made subject to their 
territorial chiefs, and were thus deprived of their sovereign 
legislative and judicial rights and of control of police, 
taxation and recruiting. Each of the confederated states 
was to be absolutely free in its internal government. 
Resolutions in common were taken only with reference 
to foreign relations. Though successively enlarged, the 
Confederation comprehended but thirty-four members in 
1813. Nevertheless Napoleon had made Germany take an 
immense step toward unity. For this progress France 
was ultimately to pay dearly by the suppression of the 
Diet of Frankfort and by the establishment of a new Ger- 
man empire far more powerful than the old. 

But for the advancement of civil order in Germany and 
for the maintenance of European peace, the idea of inter- 



442 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1806. 

posing between the three great military states of France, 
Prussia and Austria a confederation, which would be slow 
in action and necessarily pacific and which would prevent 
their frontiers from touching, was a happy combination. 
In order to make the plan truly successful, Napoleon should 
have left the confederates really independent. By trying 
to render this Confederation of the Rhine too French, his 
exactions repelled the Germans of the centre and west, 
then friendly to France, toward the northern and eastern 
Germans from whom it was his interest to separate them. 
Had the emperor conlined himself to his first conception of 
the treaty of Presburg and of the Confederation of the 
E-hine, he would have assured for a long time the peace of 
Europe and the grandeur of France. 

The creation of this new state was only a part in the 
stupendous plan of bold combinations which his genius had 
in mind. He made all his own relatives kings and princes. 
His three brothers, Louis, Jerome and Joseph, became kings 
of Holland, Westphalia and Naples. Eugene de Beau- 
harnais, his stepson, was viceroy of Italy. Murat, his 
brother-in-law, was made Grand Duke of Berg and after- 
wards king of Naples, when Napoleon judged it expedient 
to transfer Joseph to Madrid as king of Spain. His sister 
Elisa was Princess of Lucca and Piombino, and later on 
Grand Duchess of Tuscany. His other sister, Pauline, was 
Duchess of Guastalla. He himself was king of Italy and 
mediator of Switzerland. His ministers, his marshals and 
the great officers of the crown, had sovereign principalities 
outside France. Thus did Berthier at Neuchatel, Talley- 
rand at Benevento, Bernadotte at Pontecorvo. Others had 
duchies in Lombardy, the Neapolitan territory, or the states 
of Venice and Illyria, without feudal power, it is true, but 
yet with a share in the public property, and revenues. 

Thus dynastic policy replaced national policy. Napoleon 
was guilty of the imprudence of placing in one family, but 
yesterday poor and obscure, more crowns than the ancient 
houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon had ever worn. But by 
this sudden elevation of all his kindred he thought that he 
was serving France even more than his own house. Believ- 
ing in the strength of administrative organization rather than 
in that of ideas or popular sentiments, he imagined that he 
was fortifying his empire by surrounding it with these feu- 
datory states, like so many buttresses to support it and 



A.D. 1806-1807.] GliEAT^YESS OF FRANCE 443 

advance posts to guard its approaches. These kings, 
princes and dukes, who were renewing royal races in so 
many countries, were only prefects of France seated on 
thrones and wearing the ermine. No one could fail to rec- 
ognize that, under one form or another, half of Europe obeyed 
Napoleon. 

Jena (1806) and Tilsit (1807). — In face of this daily in- 
creasing ambition it was inevitable that those powers which 
were still erect should do what France had done legitimately 
in the sixteenth century against the house of Austria and 
Europe in the seventeenth century against the house of 
Bourbon. That the weaker should unite to repress him who 
aims at omnipotence is a necessary policy. Thus Napoleon 
was himself largely responsible if war was always either 
threatening or declared. 

The cannon of Austerlitz had killed William Pitt. His 
rival, Fox, a man of larger scope and without the former's 
hatred for France, succeeded as minister. Napoleon imme- 
diately offered to treat. As the restitution of Hanover, the 
patrimony of the English kings, would be the guarantee of 
a durable peace, he suggested the possibility of this arrange- 
ment. Prussia, who believed that she already held in her 
grasp this long-coveted province, was angered at what she 
considered a piece of perfidy. The death of Fox having 
restored power to the war party, the court of Berlin com- 
menced hostilities. The victories of Jena and Auerstadt 
broke the Prussian monarchy (1806). Behind Prussia 
Napoleon again found the Eussians. After the drawn battle 
of Eylau, he crushed them at Friedland, and the Emperor 
Alexander signed the treaty of Tilsit which reduced Prussia 
by a half and gave Finland to Russia (1807). 

The Continental Blockade. — A few days after Jena Napo- 
leon endeavored to attack England by promulgating the de- 
cree of Berlin. It declared the British Isles to be in a state 
of blockade and forbade all commerce with them. This was 
an act of reprisal against the maritime despotism of the 
English. But in order to render it effective it was neces- 
sary that not a single port of the continent should remain 
open to British merchandise. After having closed the ports 
of Holland, northern Germany and Prussia, he must neces- 
sarily close those of Bussia and Spain, which was equivalent 
to rendering himself the master everywhere. The conti- 
nental blockade was a gigantic engine of war, sure to deal a 



444 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1807-1809. 

mortal blow to one of the two antagonists. It was Napoleon 
whom it slew. 

Invasion of Spain (1807-1808). — As Portugal refused to 
join in the new policy, Napoleon formed an army corps to 
drive the English from that kingdom. The court of 
Madrid was then presenting to the world a pitiable spec- 
tacle. Ferdinand, the heir presumptive, was conspiring 
against his father Charles IV who was wholly controlled 
by Godoy, an unworthy favorite, and he in terror besought 
the aid of the emperor. Napoleon employed duplicity out 
of keeping with his strength. He invited the two princes 
to Bayonne and persuaded the aged monarch to abdicate in 
his favor (May 9, 1808). Ferdinand was relegated under a 
vigilant guard to the castle of Valen(^ay. Charles retired 
with a sort of court to Compiegne. Napoleon wished to 
resume the policy of Louis XIV and make sure of Spain 
on the south, so as to have full freedom of action in the 
north. The idea was correct, but its execution was unwise. 
This attempt to lay hands on Spain was a main cause in the 
fall of the Empire. 

The French troops had already entered Spain. But the 
courage of the French soldiers and the skill of their leaders 
were of no avail against the religious and patriotic fanati- 
cism of the Spaniards. In vain did Napoleon win victories 
and conduct to Madrid his brother Joseph, whom he took 
away from his throne of Naples in order to make him king 
of Spain. In that mountainous land insurrection when 
crushed at one point reappeared at another. Moreover 
England all the time was furnishing arms, money, soldiers 
and generals. 

Wagram (1809). — Despite the assurances which Napoleon 
received from all the continental powers at the interview of 
Erfurt, the English managed to organize a fifth coalition, 
which forced the emperor to leave his enterprise in Spain 
unfinished and hasten again to Germany. On May 12, 1809, 
he entered Vienna for the second time. On July 6, he won 
the sanguinary battle of Wagram, followed by the peace of 
Vienna. Austria lost 3,400,000 inhabitants whom France, 
Bavaria, Saxony, the grand duchy of Warsaw and Kussia 
shared between them. 

Napoleon then appeared to be at the acme of his power. 
His empire extended from the mouth of the Elbe to that 
of the Tiber. His marriage with the Archduchess Maria 



A.D. 1810-1811.] GREATNESS OF FRANCE 445 

Louisa had just secured his entrance into one of the oldest 
royal houses in Europe. The birth of a son (March 20, 
1811), who was proclaimed King of Rome in his cradle, 
but was to die Duke of Keichstadt, was his last gift from 
fortune. 



446 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1809. 



XXXI 

VICTORIOUS COALITION OF PEOPLES AND KINGS 
AGAINST NAPOLEON 

(1811-1815) 

Popular Reaction against the Spirit of Conquest repre- 
sented by Napoleon. — The revolution of 1688 in England 
remained wholly English, so it did not leave its own island. 
The French Revolution was cosmopolitan. The members 
of the Erench National Assembly, not merely solicitous of 
the ancient liberties of the country, had the larger idea of 
rights common to all men united in society. Thus they 
placed the Declaration of Rights as a preamble to the Con- 
stitution of 1791. They thought of humanity no less than 
of France. This largeness of view constituted the grandeur 
and also the misery of the French Revolution. As a result 
the new order of things emerged from the past only with 
frightful throes. 

But the general character of the first French Constitution 
and of the principles of 1789 applied as fully to the banks 
of the Meuse, the Rhine and the Po, as to the banks of the 
Seine. Hence this sentiment aided in French success. One 
day the Revolution abdicated its principles into the hands 
of a soldier of genius. He separated the legacy of 1789 into 
two parts. The one, liberty, he postponed ; the other part, 
civil equality^ he undertook to establish everywhere. In 
this task he sought the greatness of France, but above all 
his own. Condemned by the hatred of the English aristoc- 
racy to an endless war, he forgot in the intoxication of 
victory and power his true role and assumed that of a con- 
queror whose hand brushes aside or reduces to powder every 
obstacle. Thus at Presburg and Tilsit, Napoleon rearranged 
the map of Central Europe according to his will and indulged 
in dreams even greater than the realities of which he 
furnished a spectacle to the world. The nations, formerly 
allies of France, became for him the pieces on a chess board 



A.D. 1809.] COALITION AGAINST NAPOLEON 447 

wherewith, he played the game solely according to the com- 
binations of his own mind. He seized some, he delivered 
others, without the slightest heed to those old traditions, 
affections, or interests which would not change. And he 
never dreamed that from the midst of those masses, for a 
time inert, a force was soon to spring greater than that of 
the best drilled armies, more formidable than those coali- 
tions of kings which he had already for four times destroyed. 
This force was found in the will of men resolved that they 
would no longer be treated "like cattle which are bought 
and sold, yoked or separated. Indifferent at first to the 
fall of their royal houses, the peoples at length understood 
that they were the cruelly tried victims of those political 
convulsions. They learned that independence is not only 
national dignity as liberty is individual dignity, but that it 
is also the safeguard of personal interests. They learned 
that habits, ideas and one's most private feelings are sadly 
wounded by a foreign master, even though he presents him- 
self with his hands full of benefits. Then, to defend their 
political conscience, men regained the enthusiasm which 
they had possessed three centuries earlier to defend their 
religious conscience. It is a painful confession for France, 
though none the less too true, that the force which shattered 
Napoleon and the French state was of the same nature, 
though of another order, as that which had shattered Philip 
II and the Inquisition. 

Preparation for Insurrection in Germany. — After having 
broken up a fifth coalition at Wagram, Napoleon thought 
that he was more secure than ever. But his arms were no 
longer invincible. Junot and even Massena were unable to 
conquer Portugal and General Dupont signed in 1808 the 
shameful capitulation of Baylen. The hopes of the enemy 
increased and England was confirmed in her resolution to 
fight to the death, when she beheld hostility against Napo- 
leon on the part of the government gradually descending 
into the hearts of the people. 

After Jena Prussia had given up the struggle. Army 
corps capitulated without a combat. Powerful fortresses 
surrendered without firing a shot. Nevertheless she was the 
principal instrument of German vengeance against France, 
although her own virtues did not prepare her for that great 
role. Her king, Frederick William, was a mystic and re- 
plied to those who demanded reforms by saying, " I am he 



448 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1809. 

whom Providence has reserved for the welfare of Prussia.'' 
But none of the persons around him and not even he him- 
self had the conception of anything different from the 
ancient Prussian monarchical system. The number of 
those who resigned themselves to the existing condition of 
affairs was very large. Germans like Stein of Nassau and 
Scharnhorst and Hardenberg of Hanover, who were strangers 
to Prussia, provoked the regeneration of that country. Baron 
Stein set to work immediately after Tilsit. " The sentiment 
of a common existence must be aroused," said he. " The 
forces which lie quiescent must be utilized. An alliance 
must be concluded between the spirit of the nation and the 
spirit of authority." He abolished serfdom of the soil. 
He granted to the peasants the right of holding property 
and to the cities the right of appointing their own magis- 
trates and of administering their own affairs by elective 
councils. He reformed the higher administration in a 
liberal sense and caused it to be decided that rank and 
office, hitherto reserved to the nobles, should form the 
reward of courage and merit. Scharnhorst, on being ap- 
pointed Minister of War, undertook to elude the article of 
the treaty of Tilsit which reduced the standing army of 
Prussia to 42,000 men. He insisted upon obligatory service 
under the flag for all men of an age to bear arms, sending 
them home as soon as they were sufficiently trained. In a 
short time in this way he prepared an army of 150,000 men 
who only awaited the signal of a grand uprising to make 
their appearance on the field of battle. These reforms, 
inspired by the ideas of 1789, renewed patriotism and created 
a public spirit in Prussia by interesting all classes of the 
population in the public safety. An association, founded 
by several professors under the title of the Association of 
Virtue, or Tugendbund, had at first only twenty members, but 
rapidly spread throughout all Germany where the affiliated 
were soon numbered by thousands. Its self-appointed mis- 
sion was to restore " German strength and character." In 
1809 one of its members, the student Staaps, tried to assas- 
sinate Napoleon at Schonbrunn. Though proscribed, the 
Association continued to exist in secret. It penetrated the 
deepest strata of the population and prepared the way for 
the awakening of 1813. 

Progress of Liberal Ideas in Europe. — The resistance of 
Spain produced a great sensation in Germany. Stein turned 



A.D. 1809-1811.] COALITION AGAINST NAPOLEON 449 

to profit every piece of news which reached him concerning 
that heroic struggle. Napoleon, a genius of the military 
order, took little heed of moral forces. He believed in 
himself and in his strategic or administrative combinations, 
and never dreamed that an idea could stand firm against 
the shot of cannon. Thus the significance of Stein's re- 
forms escaped him. He laughed at the minister who " in 
default of troops of the line meditated the sublime project 
of raising the masses." But later on he demanded his dis- 
missal and finally in an insulting decree dated from Madrid 
he proscribed "the said Stein" (1809). The insult was 
deeply resented throughout the whole of Prussia and Ger- 
many. Nevertheless Hardenberg continued his reforms in 
the emancipation of the peasants, in securing freedom of 
industry for the purpose of stimulating labor and in abolish- 
ing some exceptional laws levelled against the Jews. Not 
to leave any force unemployed, he created the University of 
Berlin (1810) whence Fichte was to address his discourses 
to the German people, and which sent as many recruits to 
the insurrection as did the burning poems of Arndt and 
Schenkendorff, the Death Song of Korner and the Sonnets 
of Riickert. " Then was born in tears, in blood and despair, 
but also in prayer and faith, the idea of liberty, the con- 
sciousness of the fatherland." 

Thus liberal ideas were likewise turning against France 
in Spain and Italy. The Cortes of Cadiz drew up a con- 
stitution derived from the principles of 1789. It declared 
the sovereignty of the nation, the delegation of the executive 
power to the king and of the legislative power to the repre- 
sentatives of the country, the responsibility of the ministers 
and the suppression of privileges in adjusting taxation. The 
former king of Najjles, who fled to Sicily, gave that province 
a constitution modelled upon that of England. Thus kings 
and peoples were preparing to fight France with the very 
weapons which at the beginning of the Revolutionary wars 
had ensured the conquest of the Netherlands, Holland, the 
right bank of the Ehine, Switzerland and Italy. Privileges 
were abolished. What still survived of feudalism was re- 
placed by free institutions. As France now represented 
military dictatorship, an ancient and worn-out form of 
government, she was bound, despite the extraordinary man 
placed at her head, to succumb in the struggle. 

Formation or Awakening of the Nations. — France was 

2g 



450 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1811-1812. 

now opposed by two irresistible forces. One force she had 
herself created. It was that of liberal ideas and of the 
sovereign rights of the nation with all the consequences 
which flow therefrom. The foundation of the other force 
she had provoked by doing violence to the peoples. This 
force was the new principle of nationality. Under the 
pressure of French weapons the Spanish insurgents and the 
members of the Tugendbund had recovered the fatherland, 
to which their ancestors in the eighteenth century had paid 
so little heed. While they demanded the abolition of un- 
just privileges, they wished to preserve their autonomy. 
Thus in the mountains of Castile, of the Tyrol and of 
Bohemia, on the banks of the Elbe and the Oder, as in the 
plains of Brandenburg, this idea of nationality had its birth 
or its revelation. It renewed history by introducing the 
question of race ; literature, by investigation of folk songs ; 
philology, by comparison of languages; politics, by the 
study of the interests which result from a common origin, 
a common language and common traditions. It is this idea 
which in our own day has made Italy and Germany into 
nations. 

As early as 1809, when Austria had completed her arma- 
ments against France, public opinion in Germany with energy 
demanded that Prussia should take part in the war. Scharn- 
horst urged the king to this step, but Frederick William dared 
not undertake anything so bold. After Wagram he humbly 
made reparation to the victor for the premature patriotism 
of Prussian subjects. Nevertheless the secret movement, 
undermining the earth beneath the feet of the mighty auto- 
crat of the West, was making progress. Many persons 
even in France discerned the signs of impending ruin. It 
was at this crisis that Napoleon undertook the rashest of 
all his expeditions. 

Moscow (1812). Leipzig (1813). Campaign in France 
(1814). — To compel Russia not to abandon the scheme of 
continental blockade he led his armies 600 leagues dis- 
tant from France, while 270,000 of his best troops and 
his most skilful captains were occupied at the other extrem- 
ity of the continent in front of Cadiz and of the English 
army under Wellington. On June 24, 1812, he crossed the 
Niemen at the head of 450,000 men. Six days previous the 
Congress at Washington had declared war against the cabi- 
net of St. James, because English cruisers insisted obsti- 



A.D. 1812.] COALITION AGAINST NAPOLEON 451 

nately on the right to search vessels engaged in American 
commerce. Had the emperor renounced his mad expedition 
to Russia, had he, as in 1804, centred his forces and his 
genius upon the war with England and aided the new ally 
who was arising on the other side of the Atlantic, unlooked- 
for results might have been brought about. Unfortunately 
he trusted in himself alone. At first the expedition ap- 
peared to be successful. The Russians were everywhere 
routed as at Vitesk, Smolensk and Velutina. The bloody 
battle of the Moskva delivered into his power Moscow, the 
second capital of the empire, to which the Russians set fire 
as they retreated. 

To his misfortune he thought he had secured a peace by 
his victories. He waited for it and wasted precious time. 
When he realized that to extort it a second expedition 
against St. Petersburg was necessary, it was too late. It 
was impossible to winter in the heart of a ravaged country 
and he was compelled to retreat. The retreat might have 
escaped disaster, had not the winter been unusually early 
and severe, and had not provisions failed. The greater part 
of the army, all the horses, all the baggage, perished or were 
abandoned, either in the snows or at the fatal passage of the 
Beresina. 

While the grand army was melting away, infidelity and 
treason against which Napoleon should have provided were 
breaking out behind him. He had forced Prussia, Austria 
and the Confederates of the Rhine to furnish him numerous 
contingents. But Arndt, who had taken refuge in Sweden, 
and Stein, who had fled to Russia, were inundating Ger- 
many with xjatriotic pamphlets, wherein they called upon 
the Germans in the French army to desert, and represented 
the Tsar Alexander as the liberator of the nations. Their 
counsels were heeded. York who commanded a part of the 
Prussian contingent x^assed over to the Russians. Frederick 
William III at once engaged in a two-faced policy. He 
assured Napoleon " that he was the natural ally of France." 
He informed Alexander that he was only waiting for the 
right moment to join him with all his people. He even sug- 
gested to Napoleon that everything might be arranged by 
giving the kingdom of Poland to the king of Prussia and 
trusting him to arrest " the aggressions of the Russian power." 
This proposition was a treason even to the " German father- 
land," the Vaterland. 



452 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1813. 

Frederick William believed that such duplicity was re- 
quired by the circumstances. Therein he continued the 
policy of Frederick II, which justified whatever furthered 
the success of the Hohenzollerns. But Billow, who com- 
manded another Prussian corps, followed York's example. 
Then Stein hastened to Konigsberg, the capital of the prov- 
ince of Prussia, which was in full revolt against the king 
because the latter appeared to disavow his generals and still 
to side with Napoleon. The states of the province organized 
war to the death. On February 7 was issued the order 
concerning the whole military force of the country, the 
landwehr and the landsturm. A population of a million 
inhabitants furnished 60,000 soldiers. Then, while still 
negotiating, the king of Prussia decided to take up arms. 
Not however till February 28, 1813, did he sign the treaty 
of Kalisch with Russia. But here again he did not forget 
the interests of his house, for he made Alexander guarantee 
him aggrandizement in Germany in exchange for Polish 
territories. He desired the acquisition of Saxony, which 
would strengthen Prussia toward the mountains of Bohemia 
and fortify his position in Silesia. 

The long hesitation of Frederick William was due to his 
uneasiness at the popular movement incited by his ministers. 
He regarded the people as valuable for saving his crown, 
but had no idea of rewarding their service by the grant of 
public liberty. But he could no longer hold back. He 
launched the " appeal to my people," together wi^h an edict 
full of warlike fury concerning the landwehr and the land- 
sturm. " The combat to which thou art called justifies all 
the means ! The most terrible are the best ! Not only 
shalt thou harass the enemy, but thou shalt destroy his sol- 
diers whether singly or in troops. Thou shalt slay ma- 
rauders. ..." At the same time the lecture-rooms of the 
universities and the churches rang with calls to arms. The 
generals and the ministers in their proclamations were lav- 
ish of promises of liberty. The war of the nations had begun. 

After the passage of the Beresina, Napoleon, who had 
hastened to Paris, raised another army. But his allies with 
the exception of Denmark had turned against him. Sweden, 
led by a former French general, Bernadotte, had set the ex- 
ample of defection. Austria was waiting for a favorable 
opportunity to unite her arms with those of the Russians, 
victors without a battle. The whole of Germany, under- 



A.D. 1813-1814.] COALITION AGAINST NAPOLEON 453 

mined by secret societies, held itself ready to pass over even 
on the battlefield itself to the ranks of the enemy. The 
brilliant victories of Liitzen, Bautzen and Wurschen, won 
by Napoleon with conscripts in the campaign of 1813, ar- 
rested for a time the action of Austria. But that power at 
last forgot the ties which she had formed and the emperor 
Francis soon marched to aid in dethroning his daughter and 
grandson. 

Three hundred thousand men assembled at Leipzig against 
Napoleon's 170,000 soldiers. After a gigantic struggle of 
three days' duration, aided by the treachery of the Saxons 
who in the middle of the action deserted to their side, they 
forced Napoleon to abandon the field of battle, for the first 
time vanquished. He was obliged to retreat as far as the 
Ehine. 

In the following year began that memorable campaign in 
France where the military genius of the emperor worked 
miracles. But while he was heroically struggling with a 
few thousand brave men against combined Europe the royal- 
ists raised their heads and the liberals made untimely 
opposition to his measures. At that critical moment a 
dictatorship was needed to spare France foreign invasion, 
that greatest shame which a nation can undergo, but men 
talked only of political rights and of liberty ! To many 
the enemy seemed a liberator. In vain did Napoleon con- 
quer at Campaubert, at Montmirail and at Montereau. The 
allies continued to advance, favored by the desertions which 
broke out in all directions, especially in the south, by which 
road came Wellington and the English whom Marshal Soult 
brought to a temporary halt at the battle of Toulouse. 

A bold attack on the hostile rear guard might perhaps 
have saved France. If Paris could but stand firm for a few 
days, the allies, cut off from their communications, would 
have been ruined. But Paris, defended only for twelve 
hours, capitulated (March 30), and the Senate proclaimed 
the deposition of the emperor. He himself signed his abdica- 
tion at Fontainebleau (April 11). 

The First Restoration. The Hundred Days. Waterloo 
(1814-1815). — The French princes of the house of Bourbon 
had fought in the enemy's ranks. The Tsar, the king of 
Prussia and the emperor of Austria, finding themselves 
embarrassed as to the choice of government, were persuaded 
by Talleyrand and the royalists to recognize Louis XVIII 



454 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1814-1815. 

who dated Ms reign from the death of his nephew, the son 
of Louis XVI. The white dag replaced the flag of Auster- 
litz and France reentered the boundaries of the days before 
the Revolution. She surrendered fifty-eight strongholds 
which her troops still held, 12,000 cannon, thirty vessels, 
and twelve frigates by the first Treaty of Paris, May 30, 
1814. In compensation for so many sacrifices Louis XVIII 
granted a constitutional charter which created two Chambers 
wherein national interests were to be discussed. The emi- 
grants, \i^ho had returned with the princes, were irritated 
by these concessions made to new ideas. The greed of some, 
the superannuated pretensions of others, the excesses of all, 
excited a discontent whose echo reached the island of Elba 
whither Napoleon had been banished. He thought that in 
consequence of the general dissatisfaction he could retrieve 
his disasters. On March 1, 1815, he landed with 800 men 
on the coast of Provence. All the troops sent against him 
passed over to his side. Without firing a shot he reentered 
Paris, whence the Bourbons fled for the second time. But 
the allied princes had not yet dismissed their troops. They 
were then assembled at the Congress of Vienna, occupied in 
settling after their own pleasure the affairs of Europe. 
They again launched 800,000 men against France and placed 
Napoleon under the ban of the nations. 

In the meantime the emperor had tried tot rally the lib- 
erals to his side by proclaiming the Act, additional to the 
Constitution of the Empire, which confirmed most of the 
principles contained in the charter. As soon as he had 
reestablished order at home, he hastened to inarch against 
Wellington and Bllicher. He defeated the Prussians at 
Ligny (June 16, 1815) and for half a day fought victoriously 
with 71,000 men against 80,000 English, Belgians and Han- 
overians. Wellington was near retreat, when the Prussians, 
who had escaped through a fatal combination of circum- 
stances from Marshal Grouchy, fell upon the exhausted 
French (June 18). The catastrophe of Waterloo was a death- 
blow to the empire. Napoleon again abdicated in favor 
of his son. Napoleon II (June 22). Paris for the second 
time beheld foreigners enter her walls, pillage her museums 
and strip her libraries. Napoleon was exiled to Saint 
Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There he died 
on May 5, 1821, after six years of painful captivity. 




Co,,)rigl,t. ISlii. bj'T. Y. Cruwi-11 i Co, 



A.D. 1815.] REORGANIZATION OF EUROPE 455 



XXXII 

REORGANIZATION OF EUROPE! AT THE CONGRESS OF 
VIENNA. THE HOLY ALLIANCE 

Reorganization of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. The 
Holy Alliance. Congress of Vienna (1815). — The second 
Treaty of Paris (November 20, 1815) was more disastrous 
than the first. A war indemnity was imposed of 700,000- 
000 francs, not reckoning special claims which amounted 
to 370,000,000. The foreign occupation was to last five 
years. Rectifications of the frontier deprived France of 
Chambery, Annecy, Phillippeville, Marienburg, Sarrelouis, 
Landau and the duchy of Bouillon, and created in the 
line of defence the gaps of the Ardennes, the Moselle 
and Savoy. In Alsace Strasburg was uncovered by the 
loss of Landau, and the dismantling of Huningue opened a 
new road for invasion. On the sea Tobago, Santa Lucia, 
the tie de France and the Seychelles were lost. England, 
while leaving France her trading posts in India, denied her 
the right to fortify them. But some still greater disasters 
were escaped. England, through a wise policy unwill- 
ing to shake the throne of the Bourbons, and the Emperor 
Alexander, on account of his personal sympathy for France, 
vetoed the plans of Prussia, who was already ambitious of 
securing Alsace and Lorraine. 

The Congress of Vienna to regulate European affairs 
opened in September, 1814. All the excesses with which 
Napoleon had been reproached were repeated there. The 
four sovereigns of Russia, England, Prussia and Austria, 
who had declared themselves the instruments of Providence 
against revolutionary France, remodelled the map of Europe 
as best profited their own ambition. It resembled a market 
of mankind. The commission, charged with dividing up the 
human herd among the kings, was greatly troubled by the 
exigencies of Prussia who demanded 3,300,000 additional 
subjects as an indemnity. The Congress even discussed the 
quality of the human merchandise and gravely recognized 
the fact that a former Frenchman of Aix-la-Chapelle or 



456 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1815. 

Cologne was worth more than a Pole. In order to equalize 
the lots they reckoned a number of men from the left bank 
of the Ehine equivalent to a larger number from the right 
bank of the Oder. 

The agreement of the four Powers removed all difficulties 
at the expense of the weak. In Germany the petty princes, 
secular or ecclesiastical, and the free cities were shared with- 
out scruple as almost worthless booty. But this trade in 
white men came near rupturing the coalition. Russia and 
Prussia had come to an understanding that the former should 
annex the whole of Poland, and the latter in exchange for 
her Polish provinces the whole of Saxony. "Each must 
find what suits him," said the Tsar. England, Austria and 
Prance united in frustrating this plan by the secret treaty 
of January 3, 1815. The French ambassador, M. de Talley- 
rand, succeeded in saving the king of Saxony. At the same 
time he ruined France by proposing to annex to Prussia in 
exchange for the Saxon provinces which she specially de- 
sired the E-henish provinces for which she cared less. Later 
French misfortunes sprang from this substitution. 

Russia received the greater part of the grand duchy of 
Warsaw, together with western Galicia and the circle of 
Zamosk. Austria gained the Venetian states, Ragusa, the 
valleys of the Valtelina, Bormio and Chiavenna. Also 
Saltzburg and the Tyrol were restored to her. Prussia ac- 
quired the duchy of Posen, Swedish Pomerania, West- 
phalia and 700,000 inhabitants in Saxony. England asked 
nothing on the continent. The electorate of Hanover 
with increased territory was restored to her royal family. 
Moreover she might well be content with retaining the 
acquisitions made in every sea in the struggle against 
the Revolution and the Empire. She retained Heligoland, 
opposite the mouth of the Elbe and the Weser ; the pro- 
tectorate of the Ionian Isles at the entrance to the Adriatic; 
Malta, between Sicily and Africa ; Santa Lucia and Tabago 
in the Antilles ; the Seychelles and the lie de France in the 
Indian Ocean, and finally Ceylon and the Dutch colonies of 
the Cape of Good Hope. 

France, relatively weaker as the power of the four great 
states increased, still seemed formidable enough to render 
precautions necessary against her even along her exposed 
frontiers. The coalition shrewdly established its advance 
posts. On the north it united Belgium and Holland into 



A.D. 1815.] REORGANIZATION OF EUROPE 457 

one kingdom under the Prince of Orange. On the north- 
east was the Rhenish country, the larger part of which was 
assigned to Prussia, while the remainder was divided between 
Holland, Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria. The latter was 
formerly the ally but now about to become the enemy of 
France. Finally on the south the restoration of Savoy to 
the king of Piedmont placed Lyons, the second capital of 
France, within two days of the armies of the coalition. 

The most difficult problem had been to reconstitute the 
Confederation of the Rhine, which was directed against 
France as the Germanic Confederation. Long and violent 
debates arose on this subject in the Congress, where the 
petty states made energetic efforts to preserve their in- 
dependence. The advocates of German union, including 
Prussia, wished to reestablish the ancient German Empire. 
Austria dared not resume the ancient crown of the Haps- 
burgs. The kings of Bavaria and Wtirtemberg were re- 
solved that the crowns which Napoleon had placed on their 
heads should not fall. Already, when the extinction of 
Saxony was discussed, Bavaria had promised M. de Talley- 
rand 30,000 men if France, joining Austria and England, 
would drive Prussia into Brandenburg and Russia beyond 
the Vistula. Wtirtemberg, Hanover, Baden and Hesse ad- 
vocated the same jDroject. It was agreed that the empire, 
destroyed in 1806, should not be set up again. 

When the news of Napoleon's return from Elba arrived, 
'' a hut was constructed in all haste to shelter Germany 
during the storm, a miserable refuge, which the princes them- 
selves destroyed later on." This Confederation, of which a 
German diplomat spoke with such contempt, was to consist 
of thirty-nine states, which were to send deputies to Frank- 
fort to a Diet, over which Austria was always to preside. 

This Diet was to be composed of two assemblies. The 
first or ordinary assembly numbered seventeen votes, that is 
to say, one vote for each of the great Confederates and one 
also for each group into which the petty states had been col- 
lected. In the general assembly each Confederate had a 
number of votes proportioned to its importance. The 
former assembly was to settle current affairs ; the latter was 
to be convoked whenever a question arose concerning funda- 
mental laws or important interests of the federal act. The 
Confederates were to retain their sovereign independence, 
their armies and their diplomatic representation. But the 



458 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1815. 

Confederation was also to have its own army and to hold the 
fortresses which were built with the indemnity paid by 
France. Thus Luxemburg, Mayence and Landau were to 
cut off from France the approach to the K-hine, just as Eas- 
tadt and Ulm could prevent a French advance to the Black 
Forest or the valleys of the Danube. 

In Switzerland, Geneva and Vaud were enlarged at French 
expense by a part of the country of Gex and some com- 
munes in Savoy. Valais, Geneva and Neuchatel were 
added to the nineteen original cantons and formed the Hel- 
vetii confederation, which the Congress declared neutral 
territory. In Italy the king of the Two Sicilies and the Pope 
recovered what they had lost, but Austria again became all 
powerful in the peninsula. Mistress of Milan and Venetia, 
she made sure of the right bank of the Po through the right 
of placing a garrison in Placentia, Ferrara and Comacchio. 
She had enthroned an archduke in Tuscany, and had stipu- 
lated that the duchies of Parma, Placentia and Guastalla, 
ceded for life to the ex-Empress Marie Louise, and the 
duchy of Modena, given to an Austrian prince, should revert 
to the Austrian crown. Moreover the king of Piedmont, 
although he had received Genoa and Savoy, was exposed on 
the Tessin border and seemed at the mercy of his formida- 
ble neighbor. 

In the north of Europe Sweden, in compensation for Fin- 
land which had been taken by Eussia, received Norway 
which was taken from Denmark. Denmark in turn was to 
have in compensation Swedish Pomerania and Eiigen. But 
Prussia, implacable against the little Danish state which 
alone had been always faithful to France, forced her to ex- 
change these countries for Lauenburg. This duchy like 
that of Holstein was only the personal domain of the king, 
who through his possession of these two German provinces 
became a member of the Germanic Confederation, that is, of 
a state organized against France. Denmark experienced 
later the effect of these artificial combinations. 

The Holy Alliance (1815). — The stipulations of the Con- 
gress of Vienna (June 9, 1815) constituted the most impor- 
tant act which diplomacy had effected in Europe since the 
conclusion of the peace of Westphalia. The sovereigns of 
Eussia, Austria and Prussia undertook to give it religious 
consecration. On September 14, 1816, under the inspira- 
tion of the Tsar Alexander, they signed at Paris the Treaty 



A.D. 1815.] REORGANIZATION OF EUROPE 459 

of the Holy Alliance, wherein they asserted " in the face of 
the universe their unalterable determination to take as their 
rule of conduct, both in the administration of their respec- 
tive states and in their political relations with every other 
government, only the precepts of the Christian religion, 
precepts of justice, charity and peace." In consequence 
they bound themselves, in the first article, to regard each 
other as '' brethren," in the second, " to display to one 
another an unalterable good-will," considering themselves 
" delegated by Providence to govern three branches of one 
and the same family, to wit, Austria, Prussia and Russia," 
to form but one Christian nation, which should have for its 
sovereign " Him to Whom alone power belongs as His pos- 
session, because in Him are found all the treasures of love, 
of knowledge and of infinite wisdom." The kings of con- 
stitutional countries could not sign the Treaty of the Holy 
Alliance, but in all lands a party upheld its principles. 

Thus was crowned by a mystical and sentimental act the 
most self-seeking work of politics. These words, "justice 
and love," present a singular contrast to the real state of 
things. "Public right," said Hardenberg, "is useless;" to 
which Alexander added, " You are always talking to me of 
principles. I do not know what you mean. What, think 
you, do I care for your parchments and your treaties?" 
However, it was at the Congress of Vienna that Talleyrand 
invented the word " legitimacy." That city, where so many 
jealousies were in conflict and where so little consideration 
was paid the wishes and the true interests of kings and 
nations, was a strange cradle for any idea of rights. 

In order to satisfy political requirements Belgium had 
been yoked with Holland much against her will, and Italy 
had been handed over to Austria. Thus the way was paved 
for insurrection in the Netherlands and the peninsula. 
Poland, dismembered, remained a perpetual cause of conflict 
between the three " brother monarchs." And lastly, by 
forgetting the liberal promises made to the peoples in order 
to stir them up against Napoleon, the spirit of revolt was 
destined soon to shake that edifice so laboriously erected 
and of which at the present time nothing remains. 

The Germanic Confederation seemed fitted, it is true, to 
assure continental peace by separating the three great mili- 
tary states of Prussia, Austria and France. The temporiz- 
ing German character seemed interposed between three 



460 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1815. 

countries accustomed to rapid action: between Russia, 
which utilizes to the utmost ideas of race and religion; 
England, which obeys the commercial spirit; and France, 
which is prone to move with sudden and hasty impulse. As 
the Germany of 1815 was built on perpetual compromises, 
it represented in European affairs the genius of compromise, 
which is that of diplomacy. To fully render this service to 
the peace of the world, of necessity the Confederation should 
have been organized for defence and not for attack, and 
should have been independent both of Berlin and Vienna. 
But the rivalries and antagonisms of the two were to keep 
the Confederation in constant anxiety and turmoil and to 
cease only when one should be able to expel the other. 

In 1815 the preponderance in Europe seemed for a long 
time assured to Russia and England, the two powers which 
had been invulnerable even to the sword of Napoleon. 



A.D. 1815.] THE HOLY ALLIANCE 461 



3tXXIII 

THE HOLY ALLIANCE. SECRET SOCIETIES AND 
REVOLUTIONS 

(1815-1824) 

Character of the Period between 1815 and 1830. — As the 

National Assembly of 1789 paid more heed to ideas than 
to facts, — a course which philosophy always pursues but 
which politics never does, — it had revived and applied to 
vast multitudes such principles of political liberty and civil 
equality as had seldom been realized except in small cities 
and tribes. Unfortunately society, like an individual, can 
never carry two ideas to victory at the same time. Equal- 
ity, inscribed in the Code Napoleon, very quickly passed 
into the national character, and the French soldiers carried 
its fruitful germ thoughout all Europe. The Terror, civil 
discords and the ambition of a great man postponed the 
triumph of civil liberty. None the less the spirit of liberty 
among many European peoples united with the sentiment 
of nationality and added strength to the forces which threat- 
ened Napoleon. But the victors of Leipzig and Waterloo 
had no idea of giving it a place in the national law. They 
combined on the contrary to fetter what they called revo- 
lutionary passion, but what was only, if we eliminate its 
excesses and crimes, a new and legitimate evolution of hu- 
manity. The struggle which they engaged against the new 
spirit forms the principal interest of the drama unrolling 
between 1815 and 1830. 

In this drama, on which side was justice and consequently 
the right to life and success ? This is the question which 
must be put in front of every great social conflict. Setting 
aside commonplace accusations of hypocrisy and obstinacy, 
of fondness for disorder and search for Utopias, there always 
remains the inevitable battle between an old society, which 
is unwilling to die, and a new society, which persists in 
making a place for itself in the world and which deserves 
to have one. 



462 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1815-1824. 

Unfortunately this struggle was envenomed by passions 
which impelled one party to cruel acts of violence and the 
other to criminal conspiracies. The golden mean would 
have been attained by following the example of England in 
1689. Thus the spirit of conservatism would have been 
retained from the past but vivified for the satisfaction of 
new needs by the spirit of progress, which absolute royalty 
had formerly favored but which in the nineteenth century 
could be favored only by liberty. Louis XVIII, whom a 
long residence in England had enlightened as to the ad- 
vantages of representative government, might perhaps have 
managed to effect this miracle in France. He saw plainly 
that the country was divided into two camps armed against 
each other, and he understood that a wise and prudent policy 
alone could unite them. ''One must not," he said to his 
brother, the Count d'Artois, who had become the leader of 
reaction, "one must not be the king of two peoples. All 
my efforts are directed to the end of there being but one 
people." This sagacity did not suit the violent. Its appli- 
cation was rendered impossible by the Holy Alliance through 
a system of stern repression which excited revolutionary 
activity throughout all Europe. 

Moreover the misfortunes of that period sprang from the 
fatal idea contained in the word "restoration." To some, 
taken literally, it seemed a threat, to others a promise. It 
became both the war-cry of those whom the return of abuses 
alarmed, and the countersign of the new crusaders who were 
ready to set out to battle "for God and the king," that 
is to say for the reestablishment of ancient privileges. In 
politics one changes by going forward but restores nothing 
by going back, for society in modern nations is composed of 
elements so mobile and variable that the generations follow 
but do not resemble each other. 

Efforts to preserve or reestablish the Old Regime. 
Peculiar Situation of France from 1815 to 1819. — The 
Kevolution of 1789, undertaken to secure for the individual 
the greatest sum of liberty, had on the contrary increased 
the strength of the government in the countries where it 
temporarily triumphed, as well as in those which felt only 
its counter-shock. Twenty-three years of war trained the 
people to furnish more liberally their tribute of blood and 
their tribute of money. They paid more and conscription 
or voluntary service took the place of voluntary enlistment. 



A.D. 1815-1824.] THE HOLY ALLIANCE 463 

Moreover administrative authority, formerly dispersed 
among many intermediate bodies, had reverted to the 
prince, and an energetic centralization had restored to his 
hands all the national forces. 

Thus the " paternal " governments were stronger in 1815 
than in 1789. They had larger resources to enforce obedi- 
ence. They found in their path fewer of those traditional 
obstacles which seem so fragile and which are sometimes so 
unyielding. Leipzig and Waterloo made them the masters 
of the world. They insisted upon so organizing their con- 
quest as to restore order. It soon seemed to them that this 
order could be assured only on condition of arresting all 
movement, that is to say, of stifling the new life which was 
for them, according to the expression of Frederick William 
IV, only the "contagion of impiety." Victorious over the 
Kevolution by virtue of arms, they wished to be victorious 
also by virtue of institutions and by inflexible severity. 
Some clever persons even believed that popular passions 
rendered useful service to the absolute cause, and in certain 
places persecution of the liberals was inaugurated by throw- 
ing the populace on their scent. 

At Palermo and Madrid the Constitutions of 1812 were 
abolished and absolute power was restored. At Milan the 
Austrian Code replaced the French Code and cannon, trained 
with lighted fuses on the public square, indicated what 
system of government was being reestablished. The States 
of the Church and Piedmont returned to the same situation 
as in 1790. The institutions of Joseph II in Austria, of 
Leopold I in Tuscany and of Tanucci at Naples were con- 
demned as mischievous. In order to prevent the return of 
"those reforms, more abusive than the abuses themselves," 
a secret article of the treaty, signed at Vienna on June 12, 
1815, by Frederick IV, stated, " It is understood that the 
king of the Two Sicilies, in reestablishing the government 
of the kingdom, will tolerate no changes which cannot be 
reconciled with the principles adopted by his Imperial and 
Royal Apostolic Majesty for the internal management of 
his Italian possessions." Then too, south of the Alps and 
of the Pyrenees, the privileges of the clergy and nobility 
were revived and the Inquisition flourished once more, 
while the friends of public liberty set out on the road to 
exile, to prison and even the scaffold. 

In G-ermany the princes forgot their promises of 1813, 



464 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1815-1824. 

except in Bavaria and a few petty states belonging to the 
ancient Confederation of the Rhine. As for Austria and 
Prussia, it seemed as if nothing had taken place in the 
world during a quarter of a century. In both the patri- 
archal system was maintained, defended by 300,000 soldiers 
on the Danube and 200,000 on the Spree, and also by the 
immense army of functionaries. Even a Prussian league 
of nobles was formed to maintain the distinction of classes 
and feudal immunities. The Tories continued to govern 
England in the interest of the aristocracy. The royalists 
of Erance would have gladly reorganized everything in the 
same way for the advantage of the great proprietors and of 
the clergy. In the Chamber of Deputies under the leader- 
ship of La Bourdonnaye, Marcellus and Villele, men talked 
openly of returning to the old regime even by a bloody 
path. The emigrants of Coblentz and the fugitives of 
Ghent were determined to have their revenge for their two 
exiles. In the official world they obtained it by means of 
laws and decisions which were often dictated by passion, 
and among the masses, by means of murders which the 
authorities dared not or could not prevent or punish. A 
royal ordinance proscribed fifty-seven persons. Marshal 
Ney and several generals were condemned to death and 
shot. Marshal Brune and Generals Eamel and Lagarde 
were assassinated. The provosts' courts, from which there 
was no appeal and the sentences of which were executed 
within twenty-four hours, deserved their sinister reputation. 
The restored monarchy had its prison massacres, its terror, 
which was called the White Terror, its executioners and its 
purveyors of victims who rivalled those of the Convention. 

In Spain and in Italy there were the same excesses. Eer- 
dinand VII at Madrid imprisoned, exiled and condemned to 
death jealous partisans of the Constitution of 1812. At 
Naples the Calderari, or coppersmiths, who had been pitted 
against the Carbonari, pillaged and assassinated on behalf 
of the Minister of Police, the Prince di Canosa, whose 
deeds of violence went so far that the allied kings, fearing 
serious troubles, demanded his removal. 

Louis XVIII was also disturbed by the excessive zeal of 
his dangerous friends, more royalist than the king himself. 
By the ordinance of September 6, 1816, which the extrem- 
ists called a coup d'etat, he dismissed the ultra-royalist 
Chamber. This measure was in accordance with public 



A.D. 1815-1824.] THE HOLY ALLIANCE 465 

sentiment, for France was by no means exclusively com- 
posed of reactionaries. In spite of her misfortunes she 
showed remarkable vitality. Furthermore the ideas of 
1789, grafted in part on the civil code, had maintained a 
liberal spirit in the country in advance of the rest of Europe. 
In the Charter granted by Louis XVIII the idea of national 
sovereignty was greatly obscured by vestiges of the theory 
of divine rights. But offices were no longer sold, or lettres 
de cachet issued, or secret procedure indulged in. Justice 
did not depend upon the ruling power. The treasury be- 
longed to the nation. The laws were discussed by repre- 
sentatives of the country instead of being made by the 
sovereign. The publicity of debate furnished a powerful 
guarantee for the impartiality of the judge and the wisdom 
of the legislator, over whose actions and votes public opinion 
kept watch. Thanks to the wisdom of the sovereign, the 
era of representative government really began for France 
at the time when it was disappearing in Spain and Italy 
and when the German princes were evading the execution 
of article thirteen of the Federal Compact which promised 
it to their peoples. Thus, although 150,000 foreigners 
still occupied the French provinces, all eyes remained 
fixed upon this country, where the new era had first 
dawned and where it seemed on the point of reviving. 

Alliance of the Altar and the Throne. The Congregation. 
— But this return to the wise ideas of the first National 
Assembly did not suit the calculations of the clergy, the 
nobility, the adherents of right divine and the privileged 
classes of all sorts, who, for the sake of combating a social 
order contrary to their habits of mind and existence, em- 
ployed every weapon. Religion was the special weapon 
which seemed bound to be most efficacious. 

The considerations of the princes were mainly temporal. 
Although they had concluded a holy alliance, religion was 
in their eyes only the tool of politics. But the papacy, 
which had also just recovered its territorial power, took 
alarm at the state of men's minds. Philosophy, the sciences 
and liberty of thought seemed to it far more to be dreaded 
than Luther and Calvin. It wished on behalf of the Church 
to take part in the campaign upon which the kings had 
entered for the sake of maintaining royal power. The 
Roman curia became the resolute, implacable adversary of 
that modern spirit which is destined to triumph, since it is 
2h 



466 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1815-1824. 

only the necessary and divine development of human reason 
and conscience. With each generation Bome enlarged her 
claims, the final word of which has been uttered in our own 
day in the Syllabus and in papal infallibility. 

Those who in the sixteenth century had been her ablest 
auxiliaries against the Reformation offered her their con- 
sistent aid. The Jesuits, whose order, half a century before 
Pope Clement XIV had declared abolished, had just been 
reestablished by Pius VII (1814). From Rome they rapidly 
spread over the Catholic world, especially through France 
where, although not yet legally recognized, they were 
always more numerous than elsewhere. They displayed 
against the new enemy the same skill which they had mani- 
fested after the Council of Trent. Their deservedly famous 
missions brought about many conversions. But the Jesuits 
then inspired zealous Roman Catholics and most of the clergy 
with such distrust as prevented their being intrusted with 
the education of the young. The superintendence of the 
higher schools in France was committed to the bishops. 
This they had already secured in the other Catholic coun- 
tries. After the fall of the Directory a reaction had sprung 
up in France against the irreligious spirit of the eighteenth 
century. This reaction spread through all European coun- 
tries, Chateaubriand with his Genius of Christianity being 
its most brilliant exponent. At his side stood a logician, 
De Bonald, with his Primitive Legislation, and De Maistre, 
" a savage Bossuet," a man of passionate eloquence and of 
uncompromising disposition. These two, full of mediaeval 
theories, dreamed of such a triumph for the ideas of Gregory 
VII as that tireless old man had never been able to secure 
himself. Because Chateaubriand, De Bonald and De Maistre 
were not priests, but laymen, they drew the more attention. 
An audacious priest, Lamennais, wrote the Essay on Indif- 
ference and aimed at governing the world by papal infalli- 
bility. A society was formed to put in practice the ideas 
of Count de Maistre and to subject Italy at least to that 
theocratic government of which the Pope was to be the head. 

In the sixteenth, century in one-half of Europe the inter- 
ests of the princes and of Rome were opposed. Religious 
parties were even at times revolutionary parties. Thus the 
League desired the commune, the Protestant gentlemen of 
France aimed at ridding themselves of royalty, and the Ana- 
baptists declared war on society as a whole. After 1815 



A.D. 1815-1824.] THE HOLY ALLIANCE 467 

politics and religion were everywhere in accord, even in 
Protestant monarchies, where the civil authorities sought 
alliance with the religious spirit. Poets, as in the early 
Odes of Victor Hugo and the Meditations of Lamartine, 
sang the majesty of worship and the sweetness of pious sen- 
timents. Philosophers erected theocracy into a system. 
Politicians wished to restore to the clergy its landed pos- 
sessions, together with its civil power. Writers of all sorts 
furbished up a fantastic revival of the Middle Ages, peo- 
pled with brilliant cavaliers and fair and high-born ladies, 
with mighty kings and well-obeyed priests who together 
governed virtuous and disciplined populations. Society, 
which was profoundly moved by these various influences, 
especially in its upper classes, readily lent itself to the 
organization, " for the defence of the altar and the throne," 
of a secret body, the Congregation. This association num- 
bered in France as many as 50,000 members, lay and 
ecclesiastical. Finally, in the last years of the Restoration, 
it controlled the government and the king and ended by 
overthrowing both. 

The focus of this religious expansion was the very coun- 
try where philosophy had reigned supreme. The phenome- 
non however was universal. In all churches fervor had 
redoubled. The Methodists in England and the United 
States, the Moravian Brethren, the Pietists in Germany and 
Switzerland, reawoke the iconoclastic zeal of the sixteenth 
century. Bible Societies found themselves possessed of 
sufficient funds to distribute gratuitously between 1803 and 
1843, 12,000,000 Bibles. Madame Kriidener won over to her 
mystical ideas the Tsar Alexander, who expelled the Jesuits, 
but declared himself the protector of an association formed 
for the purpose of diffusing the New Testament among all 
the peoples of his empire. The Russian Princess Galitzin 
returned to the communion of Rome and her son became a 
missionary to the Indies. A Dane of almost royal blood, 
the Count von Stolberg, who had abjured Protestantism, 
wrote (1806-1818) a history of the Roman Church, so favora- 
ble to the Holy See, that the Roman propaganda made haste 
to translate and publish it in Italian. In Switzerland a 
grandson of the great Haller declared himself a Catholic 
and became the disciple of De Bonald. The most ancient 
university of England was agitated by the "Oxford 
Movement." 



468 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1815-1824. 

One special attempt was made, not destitute of grandeur, 
if grandeur can attach in human affairs to undertakings 
condemned in advance to faihire by their very nature. The 
protectorate over Protestant interests in Germany had be- 
longed at first to the house of Saxony, the cradle of the 
Reformation, but that dynasty had lost this distinction on 
becoming Catholic for the sake of obtaining the Polish 
crown. This protectorate was claimed by the Electors of 
Brandenburg and was exercised by the sceptic Frederick 
II himself. After 1815, Frederick William II from reli- 
gious zeal and dynastic self-interest tried to discipline the 
churches born of the Reformation, so as to oppose Protes- 
tant unity to Catholic unity, Berlin to Rome, the king of, 
Prussia to the pontiff of the Vatican. He aimed at weld- 
ing together the members of all the Protestant confessions, 
including those of England, into one evangelical church. 
He built them a temple and drew up a liturgy for the new 
cult. On October 18, 1817, the three hundredth anniversary 
of the foundation of Protestantism, he caused to be cele- 
brated a Holy Communion, in which a Lutheran minister 
gave him the bread and a Calvinist minister the wine of the 
Sacrament. " They are uniting in a void ! " exclaimed G-ans ; 
and he was right, for such union was a denial even of the 
Reformation, whose fundamental principle is liberty of in- 
dividual examination. Therefore the scheme of Frederick 
William failed, but its political usefulness was too great to 
be abandoned. 

So, in spite of the charters accorded and the constitutions 
granted or promised and in spite also of the good inten- 
tions of certain princes to effect reforms, the ancient sys- 
tem, aided by the powerful organization of the Catholic 
Church and by the revival of religious sentiment, tried to 
hold its own or to renew itself in order to restore what the 
Revolution had destroyed. It wished to restore domination 
over human will and conscience with that preeminence of 
the powerful and that dependence of the lowly which 
seemed to some to have maintained tranquil and prosperous 
periods. But this reaction was often in contradiction with 
itself. 

Liberalism in the Press and Secret Societies. — Confronting 
the powerful party which was dominated by the memory of 
past glories and recent misfortunes and which wished to 
protect society from storm by placing it under the double 



A. D. 1815-1824.] THE HOLY ALLIANCE 469 

guardiansliip of monarchical faith and religious faith, there 
were enormous numbers who ardently cherished the memory 
of the ideas for which the revolution and the national 
insurrections of the later days of the empire had been 
made. There were in Belgium, Italy and Poland, patriots 
who would not accept the sway of the foreigner. There 
were everywhere the mixed multitudes, former freemasons 
or republicans, liberals or Bonapartists, who through self- 
interest, sentiment, or theory clung to the institutions of 
1789 or 1804 and believed them necessary to good social 
order. In their ranks were men of heart and talent who 
openly advocated the new ideas in legislative chambers 
where such existed; in the courts, Avhen a political case was 
on trial; in newsj^apers and books, and even in songs, 
wherever the censorship allowed them to appear. Such 
heroes in France were Benjamin Constant, Foy, Manuel, 
Etienne, Lafitte, the elder Dupin, Casimir-Perier, Paul 
Louis Courier, Beranger, Augustin Thierry, Cousin and a 
thousand others. In Germany there were the great patriots 
of 1813, such as Arndt, Gorres, Jahn, whom the Prussian 
police soon forbade to speak or to write. In Italy there 
were Manzoni, who in his Sacred Hymns endeavored to 
reconcile religion and liberty, Berchet with his patriotic 
Odes, Leopardi with his fiery Canzones and the gentle 
Silvio Pellico with his tragedy of Eiifeinio di Messina, 
wherein Austria discerned a war-cry against the foreigner. 

These men, the orators and writers, were the friends of 
free discussion and of that pacific progress which alone is 
effective. But others, fanatics of a new creed, moved rest- 
lessly in the dark and organized secret societies wherein the 
impatient dreamed of insurrection and the criminal of assas- 
sination. They existed in all forms and under every sort 
of name, as the Knights of the Sun, the Associates of the 
Black Pin, the Patriots of 1816, the Vultures of Bonaparte. 
Some already possessed an international character which, 
fifty years later, was destined to manifest other passions 
and above all other appetites. The "Reformed European 
Patriots " and the " Friends of Universal Regeneration " 
proposed to unite the nations against their kings, just as 
their successors to-day wish without distinction of country 
to unite the poor against the rich, the workmen against their 
employers, for the purpose of bringing about a revolution, 
not indeed in creeds or institutions, but in social order. The 



470 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1815-1824. 

most famous was an old Guelph organization, which owed 
its name to the fact that its members, the Carbonari, met in 
the depths of the forests in the huts of the charcoal-burners. 
It covered Italy, France and Spain, the lands of the Latin 
tongue. Greece had her " Hetairias " and Poland the 
" Knights of the Temple " and the " Mowers," when the se- 
verity of Alexander impelled the patriots to employ secret 
societies, the grand engine of the times. Even the victors 
used the same weapon. They had the Sanfedists in Italy, 
the Army of the Faith in Spain, the Adelskette in Prussia, 
the Ferclinandians in Austria, and the Congregation every- 
where. 

Two societies peculiar to Germany, the Arminia and the 
Burschenschaft, or Union of Comrades, had succeeded to the 
Tugendbund, which was dissolved as early as 1815 by those 
whom it had so powerfully helped recover or save their 
crowns. These societies, now that the German land was 
freed from the foreigner, aimed at causing the disappearance 
of internal divisions and of the absolute or pseudo-liberal 
government of its princes. In October, 1817, on the very 
day when the king of Prussia at Berlin was trying to master 
the Reformation in order to make of it a great instrument, 
an instrumentum regni, an immense throng was joyfully 
celebrating at the Wartburg the third centennial of Protes- 
tantism and the anniversary of the battle of Leipzig. Now 
that religious liberty had been achieved and national inde- 
pendence assured, it demanded the advent of political liberty. 
It raised the colors of united Germany. It burned in its 
bonfires of rejoicing those works which opposed philosophi- 
cal and liberal ideas, as Luther had burned the papal bulls. 
" In the sixteenth century," they said, " the Pope was Anti- 
christ ; in the nineteenth the despotism of the kings is Anti- 
christ." To this manifestation the princes replied by the 
suppression of many universities. In the Prussian states 
alone four universities were closed and " instead of a consti- 
tution, Prussia had a countersign." 

Plots (1816-1822). Assassinations (1819-1820). Revolu- 
tions (1820-1821). — Eepression produced its customary 
fruits. Compressed force exploded. This is a law of physics 
which also exhibits itself in the realms of morals. There is 
this difference, that when repression acts upon ideas which 
are in consonance with material needs, it distorts them and 
renders them all the more formidable. Thus the students 



A.D. 1815-1824.] THE HOLY ALLIANCE 471 

were uttering generous sentiments in the open air and in the 
beer halls. Such public declamation was forbidden. Then 
they conspired in profound secrecy, and one of them took upon 
himself the office of assassin. In 1819 Sand stabbed, with 
the cry, " Vivat Teutonia," a writer who was in the pay of 
the Holy Alliance. Another tried to kill the president of 
the regency of Nassau. A few months later, " in order to 
drain the blood of the Bourbons at its very source," a crazy 
fanatic, Louvel, knifed the Duke de Berri, who then seemed 
to be the last heir of the elder branch. Even in London, 
Thistlewood plotted the murder of fourteen ministers at a 
dinner given by Lord Harrowby, president of the council. 

In all the states of the Holy Alliance conspiracy was the 
permanent state of affairs, so too in France, Spain, Naples, 
Turin, the Germanic Confederation and even in Sweden. 
From time to time a riot broke out in the barracks or a wine- 
shop or a university and several heads fell on the scaffold. 
The governments felt the ground quake beneath them as at 
the approach of great eruptions. Two countries however, 
from directly opposite reasons, escaped these subterranean 
convulsions. Kussia repressed them by her ponderous 
mass, in whose vastness nothing seemed as yet to be in prog- 
ress of fermentation. The Tsar was then even lavish of 
promises and liberal reforms in his German or Polish prov- 
inces. England had forestalled danger by allowing free ex- 
pression to all ideas. Thanks to the right of assembly, 
English discontent had no need to form secret societies and 
conspiracies. Thistlewood's plot is exceptional. But meet- 
ings were held of 100,000 persons who carried flags whereon 
were to be read such menacing mottoes as ^' The Eights of 
Man," " Universal Suffrage," " Equality." Those tumultu- 
ous assemblies occasioned bloody conflicts which compelled 
the suspension of the law of habeas corpus (1817). 

When in 1814 the Spaniards restored to Ferdinand VII 
the crown, " conquered for him and without him," the dep- 
uties of the Cortes went as far as the frontier to meet him, 
in order to present him with the Constitution of 1812. "■ Do 
not forget," they said with the pride of the ancient Aragon- 
ese, "that on the day when you violate it, the solemn com- 
pact which has made you king will be torn up." A few 
weeks later Ferdinand tore up this Constitution and urged 
on the reaction with such cruelty that even the members of 
the Holy Alliance remonstrated with him on the subject. 



472 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1817-1821. 

These remonstrances were useless (1817). So plots multi- 
plied with executions, and the isolated cases of recourse to 
arms were followed by an insurrection of the entire army. 
Riego at Cadiz and Mina in the Pyrenees proclaimed the 
Constitution of 1812. Ferdinand, abandoned by everybody, 
swore fidelity to this Constitution, " since such was the will 
of the people." On the same day he banished the Jesuits, 
his counsellors. He abolished the Inquisition, whose prop- 
erty was confiscated to extinguish the public debt, and 
restored the liberty of the press. Thus the two opposite 
principles, which were contending for the world, met again 
in what had just fallen and in what had just been raised up 
in Spain. 

The Spanish revolution hadHts counterpart at Lisbon, in 
Sicily, and in the Neapolitan kingdom (July) at Benevento 
and at Ponte Corvo, in the States of the Church and in Pied- 
mont, whose king abdicated (March, 1821). Many persons 
were already thinking of constituting an Italian confed- 
eration such as Napoleon III afterwards desired, or a 
kingdom of Italy such as events have made. A parallel 
movement even spread into Turkey, where the Roumanians 
and Greeks flew to arms (March and April, 1821). The 
whole south of Europe was returning to liberal ideas. In 
the rest of the continent the ferment was increasing. On 
the other side of the Atlantic the Spanish colonies were 
making themselves independent republics, as the English 
colonies had done forty years earlier. 

Moral contagions are as active as physical contagions. A 
breath of liberty was blowing over the world. It agitated 
even venerable England under her Tory ministry and aroused 
Poland where the Tsar proceeded from kindness to severity. 
Alexander established a censorship over everything pub- 
lished in the kingdom (1819). He closed the Diet of 1820 
with harsh words and was soon to declare that the Polish 
nation no longer existed. To these threats Poland immedi- 
ately replied by secret societies and every preparation was 
made for a grand insurrection. 

The Holy Alliance acts as the Police of Europe. Expe- 
dition of Italy (1821) and of Spain (1823). — Thus it appeared 
that the Holy Alliance was doomed to be vanquished by 
the mere movement of life in the bosom of the nations. 
Eive years had barely passed over the political edifice so 
laboriously erected in 1815 and already it was tottering 



A.D. 1818-1821.] THE HOLY ALLIANCE 473 

to its fall. To prevent its entire ruin, the congresses of 
sovereigns multiplied, and Prince Metternich, a man of 
great skill, assumed the guidance of it. He was the real 
ruler of Austria. To that state, formed of so many frag- 
ments patched together, any shock was dangerous. There- 
fore Metternich made the status quo the rule of his policy 
everywhere and in everything. He contrived to instil into 
the unstable mind of the Tsar Alexander the idea that, 
after having defended civilization against despotism, he 
ought to save it from anarchy even though to attain success 
he should set in motion all the armies of the coalition. It 
must be confessed that the activity of secret societies and 
the permanence of conspiracies and assassinations, which 
disgraced the liberal cause, afforded only too many pretexts 
for court-martials. Men did not yet comprehend that the 
best way to make an end of the violent is to satisfy the 
moderate. So they employed the sword, which decided 
nothing, instead of introducing reforms, fitted to conciliate 
the hostile parties. 

Prussia followed in the wake of Austria and Russia. 
Thus it was easy for Prince Metternich, after winning over 
the Tsar to his views, to establish harmony between the 
three Powers. At the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (Novem- 
ber, 1818) they renewed the alliance of 1815 and bound 
themselves by conferences, either of these sovereigns" or 
their ministers, to examine questions relative to the mainten- 
ance of peace or upon which other governments should 
formally request their intervention. This idea was moro 
precisely stated later on in the declaration of the Congress of 
Laibach (February, 1821). '' Useful or necessary changes in 
the legislation and administration of the states are to enu;- 
nate only from the free will, the enlightened and deliberate 
impulse, of those whom God has rendered depositaries oJ' 
power." This was a fresh affirmation of the divine right o1 
kings, with the interpretation that the prince upon whom 
his people wished to impose that contract called a constitu- 
tion could summon to his aid his royal colleagues. 

The majority of the French royalists were ready to follow 
this policy, which was that of Pilnitz and the emigrants. 
This time Great Britain held herself apart. So long as it 
had been a question of destroying French commerce and 
French military domination, she had lavished her guineas 
freely. But she was beginning to be alarmed at the claim, 



474 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1819-1820. 

put forth by the continental Powers, to act as the police of 
Europe in the name of ideas which at bottom only repre- 
sented interests which might some day or other become 
inimical to the interests of England. Castlereagh, who 
seemed to have inherited Pitt's feelings toward France, 
was obliged to declare in the British Parliament that no 
power has the right to interfere in the affairs of another 
power, simply because the latter makes changes in its gov- 
ernment which do not please the former ; and that by erect- 
ing one's self into a tribunal to judge the affairs of otliers, 
one usurps a power which both international law and 
common sense condemns. In the country, which owed its 
greatness and its liberty to the national insurrection of 1688, 
the friend of Wellington, the leader of the Tories, admitted, 
while deprecating the revolutionary spirit, " that there are 
revolutions which are just and necessary." 

Thus the two policies, which wrestled all through the 
nineteenth century, publicly stated their principles. The 
one policy rejected and the other approved armed interven- 
tion. In 1820 England alone upheld the former. As she 
was alone, she was unable to make it prevail. The Holy 
Alliance adopted the second, which was nothing more than 
the continuation of the policy pursued by the European 
Cabinets ever since 1791. 

The Congress of Carlsbad in Bohemia, after the assas- 
sination of Kotzebue (1819), was composed only of German 
ministers. It was decided to place the universities and 
the press under rigorous surveillance. A commission of 
inquiry was set up at Mayence, charged with searching out 
and punishing the enemies of established order. A new 
congress, which sat for six months in the capital of Austria, 
studied the means of stifling liberalism. One of these 
means was to ask from the Pope a bull against secret so- 
cieties. The final act of the Congress of Vienna (1820) 
retracted nearly all the concessions which had been made 
in 1815 in the joy of victory. " As the Germanic Confedera- 
tion," said Article 57, "has been formed by the sovereigns, 
the principle of this union requires that all prerogatives of 
sovereignty shall remain united in the supreme head of the 
government, and that he shall not be bound to admit the 
cooperation of the assemblies, except for the exercise of 
proscribed rights." The Diet of Frankfort was declared to 
be the sole interpreter of Article 13 of the convention which 



A. D. 1820-1821.] THE HOLY ALLIANCE 475 

promised constitutions. It was empowered to employ the 
confederated troops against all disturbers of public tran- 
quillit}^, even without the consent of the local governments. 
The police of the Holy Alliance persecuted the patriots of 
1815 as Napoleon had persecuted those of 1807. News- 
papers and reviews were suppressed. The philosopher 
Fries and the naturalist Oken were dismissed. Other pro- 
fessors and students were exiled. Grorres was expelled 
from Prussia; Jahn, Arndt and Welker were imprisoned. 

In France liberal ideas, till then encouraged in a certain 
degree by Louis XVIII, were held responsible for the as- 
sassination of the Duke de Berri by Louvel. The king, 
swept on by the reaction, was forced to form a new ministry, 
which caused the government to enter upon the fatal path- 
wherein the throne was wrecked in 1830. Individual lib- 
erty was suspended, the censorship of the press restored, 
and the double vote was introduced so that political influ- 
ence might pass into the hands of the great landed pro- 
prietors, who voted twice, that is, in the college of the 
department and in the college of the district. The birth 
of the Duke de Bordeaux (September 29, 1820), the post- 
humous son of the Duke de Berri ; the elections of Novem- 
ber, 1820, in which only a few liberals were chosen to the 
Chamber; and the death of Napoleon (May 5, 1821), in- 
creased the joy and the hopes of the ultra-royalists. Men 
spoke openly of restoring their ancient prerogatives to the 
monarchy and the Church. Beranger was condemned to 
prison for his songs. The University received a stern 
warning that it was under suspicion when the lectures of 
Cousin and Guizot were suppressed. Lastly, in order to 
intimidate the press, journals were placed on trial, not for 
any definite act of transgression, but on the charge that 
their tendency was injurious. 

These measures tended to reestablish a superficial calm 
in the countries which had been the principal theatres of 
militant liberalism. The Congresses of Troppeau (1820), 
Laibach (1821) and Verona (1822) aimed at stifling liber- 
alism in the two peninsulas where it had just triumphed. 
They refused to discriminate between legitimate complaints 
and inopportune demands. The revolutions in Greece, 
Spain, Naples and Turin were represented in a circular 
note " as being the same in origin and deserving the same 
fate." If no measures were taken against the Greeks, it 



476 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1821-1825. 

was because Russia was interested in that revolt of her 
co-religionists whereby she obtained allies at the very heart 
of the Ottoman Empire. In Italy Austria undertook to 
destroy "the false doctrines and the criminal associations 
which have brought down upon rebellious nations the 
sword of justice." A numerous army, to be followed at 
need by 100,000 Russians, set out from Venetian Lombardy. 
At Rieti and Novara the recruits of Pepe and of Santa Rosa 
could not stand against the veterans of the Napoleonic 
wars, and the Austrians entered Naples, Turin and Messina. 
Behind them the prisons were filled and scaffolds erected. 
Austria lent her prisons as well as her soldiers. The dun- 
geons of Venice, Laibach and the Spielberg were crowded 
with victims, but there was a still larger number in the 
native prisons. There were 16,000 at one time in the cells 
of the Two Sicilies. In Piedmont all the leaders who had 
been captured were beheaded. Those who escaped were 
executed in effigy. No insurrection had really broken out 
in the States of the Church, but four hundred persons were 
incarcerated there. Many of them were condemned to the 
death penalt}^ which the Pope commuted into perpetual or 
temporary confinement. The Piedmontese Silvio Pellico, 
imprisoned at first at Venice and then in the Spielberg, has 
narrated with a martyr's calmness what tortures this piti- 
less policy added to his captivity. 

After the executions administrative measures and a clever 
police maintained external order. The king of Sardinia 
reestablished forced labor (1824) and permitted no persons 
to learn to read unless they possessed property to the 
value of 1500 francs (1825). To demonstrate his zeal 
for the Church he ordered a fresh and equally useless per- 
secution against the peaceable Waldenses. The Pope re- 
established episcopal jurisdiction in civil affairs, restored 
the right of asylum to churches, and from hatred of all 
novelties suppressed even the Vaccination Commission as 
a revolutionary institution. When Leo XII succeeded 
Pius VII (1823), a violent encyclical condemned civil mar- 
riage, and excited the kings to intolerance. Rome set the 
example. The Inquisition opened a new prison, which was 
immediately filled with heretics (1825). The king of 
Naples, Francis I, almost absolutely interdicted the en- 
trance of foreign books, so as to establish a sort of sanitary 
cordon around his kingdom, and cause his peoples to recover 



A.D. 1823.] THE HOLY ALLIANCE 477 

in their isolation their holy ignorance. Then he hired ten 
thousand Swiss mercenaries to assure the collection of the 
taxes and the obedience of his subjects, the two chief 
anxieties of his government. Wherever there was material 
welfare, a formidable spy system wormed its way into the 
midst of social relations and even into the privacy of the 
domestic hearth. 

The spirit of the century desired three things. These 
were free institutions, equality before the law, and national 
independence. To the first two demands the Holy Alli- 
ance replied by reverting to the principles of pure monarchy 
and of the feudal system. To the third the answer was 
the disdainful remark of Metternich, " Italy is only a geo- 
graphical expression," or that of the Tsar Alexander, "The 
Polish nationality is nonsense." 

In 1823 this policy seemed successful. There were fewer 
conspiracies and no more assassinations. The insurrections 
were crushed at one of the points where, because there the 
people and the army had entered into them, they had been 
most threatening. With her docile lieutenants seated on 
the different thrones of Italy, with her army of occupation 
at all the strategical points, with her numerous spies and 
the assistance of the Holy Father, Austria did in fact believe 
that she had effected the durable work of restoration. To 
her allies she pointed with pride at that peninsula formerly 
so distracted where, from the base of the Alps to the Straits 
of Messina, she had brought about the silence of death. 
Then the Holy Alliance thought of undertaking the same 
task beyond the Pyrenees. There all passions had been let 
loose. Eeactionaries, crucifix in hand, were murdering 
their enemies, and, meanwhile, the rabble were cutting 
throats to the revolutionary song of the Tragala. 

To lull the suspicions which France had for a moment 
inspired by her hesitation at Austrian intervention in 
Italy, the government of Louis XVIII asked permission to 
stifle the disorders in Spain. Chateaubriand, who was 
then minister, believed that this expedition would confer 
upon the young fleurs de lis of the Eestoration the splendor 
with which fifty victories had crowned the imperial eagles. 
England, where the irritation was increasing at the claims 
of the Holy Alliance to govern Europe, held aloof. Wel- 
lington, her ambassador at Verona, would allow France 
nothing more than an army of observation along the Span- 



478 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1823-1824. 

ish frontier. Canning, who, since the suicide of Castle- 
reagh, had become the British prime minister, threatened 
in open Parliament to recognize the independence of the 
Spanish American colonies as retaliation for the French 
expedition. 

The army, commanded by the Duke of Angouleme, entered 
Spain on April 7, 1823. It had little opportunity for fight- 
ing and encountered no serious resistance except at the siege 
of Cadiz. On August 31 the French troops took possession 
after a brilliant assault of the stronghold of the Trocadero, 
and this success brought about the surrender of the city. 
Although fighting for the despot Ferdinand, the French 
army carried its liberal spirit to Spain. The Duke of 
Angouleme, by the ordinance of Andujar, sought to forestall 
the fury of a royalist reaction and to prevent arbitrary 
arrests and executions. But Ferdinand had no intention 
of permitting his saviors to impose conditions. The mili- 
tary commissions were implacable. Eiego, grievously 
wounded, was carried to the gibbet on a hurdle drawn by 
an ass. A counter revolution took place at Lisbon as well 
as Madrid. The king declared the constitution abolished 
and for a few months reestablished absolute i)ower. 

Despite the congratulations sent by the princes and the 
Pope to the honest but commonplace prince who had just 
conducted this easy campaign, the elder branch of the 
Bourbons had won in it little military glory. Most appar- 
ent in this expedition was the fact that French soldiers had 
been placed at the service of a knavish and cruel prince and 
French finances depleted by an expenditure of 200,000,000 
francs. Still, petty as was this success, it encouraged the 
French ministry in their reactionary projects. The elec- 
tions increased this confidence, only nineteen Liberals ob- 
taining seats in the Chamber. 

Charles X (1824). —The death of Louis XVIII, a 
prudent and moderate king, seemed to assure the triumph 
of the ultra-royalists, by transferring the power to the 
Count d'Artois (September 16, 1824). He was one of those 
people who gain nothing from experience. In 1789 this 
prince had been among the first to emigrate. While learn- 
ing nothing, he had forgotten nothing. Louis XVIII on 
his death-bed, placing his hand on the head of the Duke de 
Bordeaux, said to him, "Let Charles X look out for this 
child's crown," but he had paid no heed. He felt himself 



A.i;. 1825.] THE HOLY ALLIANCE 479 

called upon to revive the ancient monarchy . " In France, " 
he said, "the king consults the Chambers. He pays great 
heed to their advice and their remonstrances ; but, when the 
king is not persuaded, his will must be done." These 
words were a denial of the Charter and an intimation of its 
speedy violation. At the very beginning of his reign he 
asked from the Chambers an indemnity of $200,000,000 for 
the emigrants, the reestablishment of convents for women, 
the restoration of the rights of primogeniture, a rigorous 
law against the press and another concerning offences com- 
mitted in churches. The latter was called the law of sacri- 
lege. The new Chamber of extremists accorded everything. 
There was no resistance, except in the Chamber of Peers, 
which by its opposition won a few days of popularity. 

In May, 1825, the new monarch revived the solemnity of 
coronation with all traditional ceremony, with the ancient 
oath and with touching for the king's evil. A popular 
manifestation was the response to this royal and religious 
festival. General Foy, a leader of the liberal party, had 
just died. One hundred thousand persons followed his bier, 
and a national subscription provided for the future of his 
children. 



480 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1815-1830. 



XXXIV 

PROGRESS OF LIBERAL IDEAS 

The Eomantic School. The Sciences. — Nevertheless 
liberal opinions were gaining ground every day and oppo- 
sition to the spirit of the Congregation was increasing. 
Voltaire seemed alive again, there were so many editions 
of his works. Beranger was in every hand, and the people 
wanted to see Tavtnffe played in every theatre. In letters 
and arts a great movement was to be noted. This move- 
ment was in the direction of liberty, for it ran counter to 
discipline and traditions. The almost volcanic eruption 
of the romantic school (1825-1830) overwhelmed worn-out 
formulas and emitted dazzling light, despite its scoria and 
ashes. Goethe and Schiller, Shakespeare and Byron, had 
been the forerunners of the new men of letters. They had 
even been precursors of those artists who, in their search 
for fresh expressions of the beautiful, gave the human mind 
a salutary shock and aided the work of statesmen in advan- 
cing society. Thierry, Guizot, De Barante, Mignet and 
Michelet reformed history. Cousin and Jouffroy reformed 
philosophy. Hugo, Lamartine, De Vigny, Dumas, Musset 
and Balzac reformed poetry, the drama and romance. 
Villemain and Sainte-Beuve reformed literary criticism. 
Gericault, Delacroix, Ary Scheffer and Delaroche reformed 
painting. David d'Angers and Eude reforined sculpture. 
The overthrow of the ancient classical system rendered 
still more difficult the victory of the ancient social system. 

Learned letters also enlarged their horizon. Champollion 
forced the Egyptian Sphinx to speak. De Sacy and De 
Eemusat lifted some of the veils which hid the Orient. 
Guigiaut began the publication of Creuzer's Symhologism 
and Mythology, and made the religions of antiquity com- 
prehensible. All this meant new ideas put into general 
circulation. 

The sciences continued their serene and majestic march, 
and added great names to the list of honor. There were 



A.D. 1815-1830.] PROGRESS OF LIBERAL IDEAS 481 

Poisson, Ampere, Fresiiel, Caiichy, Chasles, Arago, Biot 
and Dulong in mathematics and physics; Gay-Lussac, 
Thenard, Chevreul and Dumas in chemistry; Cuvier, 
Geoffroy, Saint Hilaire, Brongniart, De Jussieu, and 6lie 
de Beaumont in the natural sciences. By the successful 
efforts of so many superior men, natural philosophy mas- 
tered truths whose application to manufactures by creating 
new interests aided also to transform society. The light- 
houses of Fresnel began to illuminate the coasts and guided 
vessels thirty-five miles out at sea (1822). The steamboats 
of the Marquis de Jouffroy, kindred spirit with Watt and 
Fulton, appeared on the French rivers and in their ports 
(1825). The company of Saint Etienne laid the first French 
railway (1827). Two years later Seguin d'Annonay con- 
structed the tubular locomotive. The discoveries of 
Oersted (1820) and of Ampere and Arago (1822) indicated 
the "electric telegraph. 

Thus, during those fruitful years (1815-1830) were 
brought into being the great inventions of railways and 
steamers which have transformed the commerce of the 
Avorld. This immense advance had no direct connection 
with politics; but they who brought it to pass thereby 
increased confidence in the might of human genius. They 
accustomed men's minds to severe methods of scientific in- 
vestigation. They showed what are the necessary con- 
ditions of truth. Thereby they contributed, some of them 
unconsciously, to the development in modern civilization 
of that reasoning spirit which was a main force of liberal 
opinion. 

Formation in France of a Legal Opposition. — In the 
Chamber men of talent or authority, like Chateaubriand, 
Royer-Collard, De Broglie, Pasquier, De Barante, Mole, 
and Benjamin Constant served the cause of public liberty. 
Serious journals, like the Globe, the Censeur, the Debats, 
the Coiistitutionnel, and the Courier Franqais, founded a 
new power in the state, that of the press, and defended it 
before the public, while higher education popularized it in 
the schools. The French Academy itself protested against 
the proposed law which aimed at suppressing the freedom 
of periodicals. 

In short, ten years of peace had afforded commerce and 
manufactures an opportunity to expand. The public finances 
were economically administered and the country was rapidly 
2i 



482 • HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1817-1825. 

replacing the capital which had been destroyed by war, in- 
vasion and indemnities. But amidst the general pros- 
perity there were manifestations of that nervous impatience 
to which France is subject after a prolonged calm has made 
her forget the ruins caused by the great commotions which 
appall her, and which down to the present day seem con- 
genial to her strange national temperament. 

Even social questions began to be agitated. As philoso- 
phy and religion, those two ancient teachers of the human 
race, had no new lessons to impart to the fresh life upon 
which the world was entering through manufactures and 
politics, dreamers attempted to take their place. The 
Count de Saint Simon issued his New Christianity, in 
which he formulated the famous principle : " To each man 
according to his capacity; to each capacity according to its 
works." This doctrine was not calculated to please the 
favorites of birth and fortune. Many extravagances were 
destined to spring from the little church which the Saint 
Simonians tried to found. The teachings of their master, 
of Eobert Owen in England, and of Fourier in France, gave 
birth to dangerous Utopias which, after covertly working 
their way beneath official society, broke out in the frightful 
civil wars of 1848 and 1871, and went on in the workshop 
after the tumult had ceased in the street. Some ideas of 
those dangerous theorists would have made humanity retro- 
grade, since they wished to render the state the absolute 
master in even industrial and private life. Still they turned 
men's attention to new problems, which a sentiment of 
equity commands us to study even if the wisdom of the 
legislator cannot solve them. Already men were to be 
found who, quarrelling with society as a whole, with its 
laws and its religion, undertook to .overturn everything. As 
yet they were only solitary dreamers. Later on sinister 
figures will appear with violent passions and monstrous 
appetites. At that moment the extravagance of some of 
their doctrines excited laughter rather than uneasiness in 
the crowded ranks, where to demand from the government 
a more liberal policy seemed sufficient. 

The country was with the Liberals. After May 5, 1821, 
Bonapartism, placing little confidence in the son of Napo- 
leon, then a half prisoner in Vienna, and not yet sure of his 
nephew, Prince Louis, existed rather as a memory than a 
hope. In the influential class the Eepublic found but few 



A.D. 1825-1828.] PROGBESS OF LIBERAL IDEAS 483 

advocates. Socialism was rather a doctrine than a party. 
Thus the real masters of the situation were the Liberals, 
who were ready to rally round the dynasty if it broke with 
the Congregation and with the men of 1815. On their side 
were the merchants, who do not love the privileged by birth; 
the burgher class, which rails as soon as it ceases to fear; 
the persecuted opponents of the Congregation, and all those 
people who in the cities are hostile to any government, and 
in the rural districts are afraid of seeing tithes and feudal 
rights restored. The great cities were in opposition, and 
Paris most of all. At a review of the national guard in 
April, 1827, the cry, '"'Down with the ministers," rang 
through the ranks. That very evening the national guard 
was disbanded. Under the circumstances this measure was 
necessary, but it estranged the burgher class from the court. 
To overcome the opposition of the upper Chamber seventy- 
six peers were created at once. But a general election was 
imprudently provoked which sent to the Chamber a Liberal 
majority. The Conservative ministry fell from office 
(December, 1827). 

A few years earlier the various elements of opposition 
had agitated only by secret societies and plots, resulting in 
riots and assassinations which injured the cause of liberty. 
But now in gradually enlightened public opinion a far more 
formidable foe to the ancient system of government had 
arisen. A great Liberal party, organizing and disciplining 
itself, introduced legal opposition at the very heart of the 
government into the two Chambers, and thence it was to 
force an entrance into the ministry. Thus, with definite 
ideas men were marching openly to their goal without 
either rash deeds or violence, accepting the royalty of the 
Bourbons, but requiring of them "to make the Charter a 
truth." The accession of Monsieur de Martignac to the 
presidency of the Council seemed a reason for believing 
that France would escape disasters by necessary reforms at 
the proper time. His ministry abolished censorship of 
the press and sought to prevent the electoral frauds which 
preceding ministries had favored. It asserted the liberty 
of conscience, which had formerly been menaced, reopened 
at the Sorbonne the courses of lectures which the Congre- 
gation had closed, and placed under one common system the 
educational establishments controlled by ecclesiastics. This 
was only a beginning. Nevertheless it was easy to infer 



484 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1822-1829. 

that the country was again returning to the era of pacific 
progress, from which the assassination of the Duke de 
Berri and a reactionary ministry had caused it to depart. 

The general condition of the world, which must always 
be taken into account in any endeavor to discover resistless 
movements of public opinion, confirmed this hope, for the 
ancient system was everywhere on the retreat. 

Huskisson and Canning in England (1822). New For- 
eign Policy. Principle of Non-intervention. — Beginning 
with 1822 the Tories, or rather the Tory policy, had lost 
the direction of English affairs. The most influential min- 
ister, George Canning, the pupil of William Pitt, had just 
gone over to the Whigs. England, irritated by the arro- 
gant interference of the northern courts in every conti- 
nental matter, was beginning to restrain her former allies 
by favoring the ideas which they combated. In 1823 
Canning caused the presidency of the Board of Trade to 
be given to Huskisson, whose customs reforms opened great 
breaches in that tariff fortress, behind which the aristoc- 
racy sheltered their privileges and fortunes. This eco- 
nomical revolution was dictated by the liberal spirit, and 
because of its consequences was far more serious than many 
a political revolution. It was destined, step by step, to 
control all the industrial world; to give work to the poor, 
comfort to many, and the habit and necessity of individual 
and untrammelled action to all. 

Ireland was a prey to frightful misery, the result of 
atrocious legislation. " The wigwam of the Indian in the 
New World," said one deputy, "is more habitable than 
the hut of the poor Irishman. I have seen the peasants of 
Kerry offer to work for twopence a day." This state of 
things could not change until the day when the representa- 
tives of that unhappy country were able to plead her cause 
in Parliament. But the Roman Catholic Irish were smitten 
with political disability. The lords rejected the bill in 
their behalf which the Commons had accepted. But two 
years after Canning's last speech in their favor, Robert 
Peel was himself compelled to propose and pass the 
Catholic Relief Bill (1829). In 1817 Parliament, at the 
pious instigation of Wilberforce, had voted for the abolition 
of the slave-trade. Men now desired that, like the Con- 
vention, it should decree the emancipation of the slaves. 
Canning rejected immediate emancipation, but proposed 



A.D. 1830-18i().] PROGRESS OF LIBERAL IDEAS 485 

such amelioration as made the slave a man and opened to 
him the door of liberty. That humane law of 1825 led a 
few years later to the suppression of slavery (1833). 

Thus the English Parliament allowed itself to be affected 
by generous ideas. Still, that great body rightly was not 
regarded as sufficiently liberal. The aristocracy held the 
House of Lords by the hereditary rights of its older sons. 
It held the House of Commons by its younger sons and its 
dependents, seats for whom it obtained by means of rotten 
boroughs. Twelve families controlled 100 seats at West- 
minster, and sometimes sold them for cash. One village 
of seven houses sent two members to the House. Gatton 
and Old Sarum belonged to one landed proprietor, who 
elected the representative himself, while the great city of 
Manchester possessed neither elector nor deputy. The 
powerful Birmingham Union was formed to rouse the coun- 
try on the double question of parliamentary reform and 
abolition of the corn laws, so as to secure cheaper bread. 
Of these two reforms, the one was effected in 1832, but the 
other had to wait until 1846. Thus under the influence of 
the new spirit old England was being transformed, without 
disturbance and through free discussion. The prosperity 
of the country gained thereby. As early as 1824 Canning 
was able to diminish the taxes $10,000,000, create a sink- 
ing-fund for the public debt, and reduce the customs-duties 
on rum, coal, silks and woollens. These measures favored 
manufactures, commerce and the rising public credit. 

Foreign policy was assuming the same character. In 
1821 England had resigned herself to the intervention of 
Austria in Italian affairs ; but in 1823, at the Congress of 
Verona, she was already opposing the French expedition 
against the constitutional party of Madrid, although still 
showing the latter nothing but barren sympathy. The irri- 
tation against the Holy Alliance was on the increase; so 
when the allies, in order to include the New AVorld in their 
sphere of action, had the French ambassador, M. de Polignac, 
propose to Canning that they should discuss the means of 
putting down the rebellion of the Spanish colonies, the 
minister replied: "If any power assists Spain to recover 
her transmarine provinces, England will take measures to 
protect her own interests." To her it was not a question 
of sentiment, and we must not consider her policy more 
generous than it was. Nor did France intend to close the 



486 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1810-1822. 

immense market which was opened to her by the inde- 
pendence and free trade of the Spanish colonies. 

However, the policy of the future gained by the definite 
and even threatening affirmation of the principle of non- 
intervention. Without ranging herself on the side of de- 
mocracy, England meant that governments should be left 
to extricate themselves as best they could from the diffi- 
culties which their own violation of national ideas and 
interests might bring upon them. 

Independence of the Spanish Colonies (1824). Constitu- 
tional Empire of Brazil (1822). Liberal Revolution in Por- 
tugal (1826). — Spain had subjected her transatlantic 
provinces to a system which inevitably brought about 
revolt. All manufactures, all foreign commerce, and 
many branches of agriculture, including cultivation of the 
vine, had been forbidden the colonists. They were bound 
to obtain from their mountains the gold and silver which 
the galleons bore away to Spain, and to receive from the 
mother country all manufactured articles, including even 
iron and building timber. In short, Spanish America was 
a farm worked to the uttermost by its proprietor, the gov- 
ernment of Madrid. Inhuman penalties upheld this un- 
natural state of affairs. The smuggler was punished with 
death, and the Inquisition placed its religious authority 
and its tribunals at the service of this strange economical 
despotism. Insurrection broke out in Mexico in 1810, 
when the French invasion of Spain prevented the mother 
country from supporting its viceroys. The revolt spread 
from one province to another. In 1816 the countries com- 
posing the viceroyalty of La Plata proclaimed their inde- 
pendence. In the following year Chili followed this 
example. Toward 1821 Peru, Colombia, Central America 
and Mexico became free ; and the Spaniards retained only 
a few points in the New AVorld, together with the islands 
of Cuba and Porto Rico. As no one foresaw the unhappy 
dissensions into which these young republics were to fall, 
this defeat of absolutism in the New World reacted upon 
public opinion in the Old and the liberal cause was strength- 
ened thereby. One of the heroes of independence, Bolivar 
the Liberator, was almost as popular in Paris as in Caracas. 

The Congress of Washington speedily recognized the new 
states. In 1822 England was disposed to do the same, 
although an Act of Parliament in 1819 had forbidden Eng- 



A.D. 1822-1827.] PROGEESS OF LIBERAL IDEAS 487 

lisli subjects to furnish munitions of war to the insurgents. 
The French expedition beyond the Pyrenees decided her, 
toward the end of 1824, to send diplomatic agents to Span- 
ish America and to ask commercial treaties from the new 
states. In order to justify his new policy, Canning ad- 
dressed to the European Powers a circular note in which he 
repudiated the doctrine of Pilnitz, still the basis of the Holy 
Alliance. He tried to eliminate from the wars against 
France their original character, which was that of two hos- 
tile principles in hand-to-hand conflict. He set forth only 
the character they had assumed later on as a struggle for 
the independence of the states. He claimed that the coali- 
tion was formed against imperial ambition and not, out of 
respect for legitimacy, against the government actually 
established in France. And he recalled with cruel malice 
that in 1814, even after having deposed Napoleon from the 
throne, the allies had thought of bestowing the conquered 
crown upon another than a Bourbon. 

In 1826 and 1827 England made a fresh application of 
these doctrines, but this time on the European continent, 
and consequently nearer to inflammable materials. 

Imperial France, without designing it, had given liberty 
to Spanish and Portuguese America by overturning at 
Madrid and Lisbon the two governments which held their 
colonies in such strict dependence. Brazil was still subject 
to the unnatural severity of the old colonial system when the 
house of Braganza, driven from the banks of the Tagus by 
the army of Junot (1808), took refuge there. The king, 
whom his colony sheltered and saved, was obliged to remove 
the ancient prohibitions and inaugurate a liberal system 
which, under the form of royalty (1815) and then of a 
constitutional empire (1822), guaranteed to those immense 
provinces internal peace and growing prosperity. The 
mother country was unwilling, after the fall of Napoleon 
and the return of her former king, to be left behind. John 
VI was obliged, in 1820, to grant Portugal a constitution 
which the intrigues of his second son, Dom Miguel, and the 
defeat of the Spanish Liberals (1823) caused to be torn up. 

At the death of John VI (1826), Dom Pedro, the eldest 
son of that prince, the ex-emperor of Brazil and legitimate 
heir of the Portuguese throne, again abdicated that crown 
in favor of his daughter Dona Maria. But first he granted 
a new constitution. The absolutists on the banks of the 



488 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1826. 

Tagus and of the Douro, supported by those of Spain, re- 
jected both the Charter and the child-queen. Portugal 
was both a farm and a market for Great Britain. Many 
Englishmen possessed vast territories there. Its wines 
went to London and its manufactured goods came from 
England. An absolutist victory at Lisbon appeared to 
Canning as a defeat for English influence and English in- 
terests. He promised assistance to the Portuguese regency. 
On December 11, 1826, he announced to Parliament the 
measures which had been taken to that end. His speech 
made a great sensation, because for the first time since 
1815 a great power stated in public, and with truth, the 
moral condition of Europe. Canning recalled the fact that 
when Prance had crossed the Pyrenees to restore to Ferdi- 
nand VII tlie powers of which his subjects had deprived 
him, England, without an army, without foolish expendi- 
ture, had wrested a hemisphere from this restored monarch; 
that, in a word, she had with one stroke of the pen re- 
established the balance of the Old World by giving existence 
to the New. His country was not ignorant, he said, how 
many hearts and energetic arms, in their desire for what is 
best, were stretched out toward it. This force was that of 
a giant. The duty of England was to make the champions 
of exaggerated sentiments feel that their interest lay in not 
making such an empire their enemy. England in the con- 
flict of opinions which agitated the world was in the position 
of the master of winds. She held in her hands the leathern 
bottles of ^olus. With a single word she could let loose 
the hurricane upon the world. These threats were directly 
levelled at the Holy Alliance. They disturbed Prince 
Metternich, who accused the English minister of wishing 
"to unchain the Kevolution once more," but in every coun- 
try they rejoiced the heart of the Liberals. A medal, 
struck in Prance in honor of Canning, bore on one side these 
words, " Civil and Religious Liberty in all the Universe " ; 
and on the other side, "In the name of the nations, the 
French to George Canning." 

The motto told the truth. It certainly was for two great 
things, civil liberty and religious liberty, or the rights of 
the citizen and the rights of conscience, that mankind had 
engaged in the great combat; and our fathers were right to 
wage it. 

The intervention of England in Portugal, "authorized 



A.D. 1826.] PROGRESS OF LIBERAL IDEAS 489 

by former treaties," was nevertheless far less striking 
than the eloquence of her minister. The enterprises of 
Dom Miguel, arrested for a time, had free course after the 
premature death of Canning (August 8, 1827), which was 
speedily followed by the return to power of the Tories. 
Further on we shall see this question solved by the triumph 
of a new policy among the western Powers. 

Liberation of Greece (1827). — A few days before his 
death Canning signed the Treaty of London, by which three 
of the great Powers bound themselves to compel the Sultan 
to recognize the independence of the Greeks. 

The insurrection of that people, long favored by Russia 
and rendered inevitable by Turkish cruelty, broke out in 
1820. The governments condemned it at first. The Eng- 
lish government opposed it because that struggle compro- 
mised the existence of Turkey, on whose preservation 
apparently depended the security of its Indian empire. 
" British liberalism," said Chateaubriand, " wears the liberty 
cap in Mexico and the turban at Athens." As for the Holy 
Alliance, it saw in this insurrection nothing but a rebellion. 
By a strange application of the doctrine of divine right it 
insisted that the principles of legitimacy ought to protect 
the throne of the chief of the Osmanlis. "Do not say Hhe 
Greeks, ' " Nicholas one day replied to Wellington, who was 
expressing to him England's sympathy for them. "Do not 
say 'the Greeks,' but 'the insurgents against the Sublime 
Porte.' I will no more protect their rebellion than I would 
wish the Porte to protect sedition among my own subjects " 
(1826). 

A few months later, it is true, this language was contra- 
dicted by acts, for public opinion was becoming irresistible 
in favor of the Hellenes. All liberal Europe espoused a 
cause heroically maintained for national independence and 
religion. Sympathy Avas excited, even among the Conserva- 
tives, by that magic name of Greece, by the struggle of 
Christians against Mussulmans. In France the finger of 
scorn would have stigmatized any one who did not applaud 
the exploits of Odysseus, Botsaris, Canaris and Miaoulis, 
the audacious chieftains who led their palikaris into the 
thickest ranks of the janissaries and their fire-ships to 
the heart of the Mussulman squadrons. Poetry came to 
the succor of the insurgents. Lord Byron devoted to them 
his fortune and his life. The politicians were forced to 



490 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1826-1827. 

follow the current. Canning easily involved England. 
Beholding Italy subject to Austrian influence, Spain re- 
stored to friendly relations with France, and the East agi- 
tated by Russian intrigues or threatened by her arms, 
England was growing uneasy as the northern Powers thus 
approached the shores of the Mediterranean whither enor- 
mous trade was on the point of returning. She had many 
formidable vantage points in that sea, in Gibraltar, Malta 
and the Ionian Isles. But they were fortresses and not 
provinces. From them she could watch and not control. 
It was of vital importance to England not to allow the 
Romanoffs to dominate at Naaplia and Constantinople, as 
the Hapsburgs were dominating at Naples, Rome and 
Milan, or the Bourbons at Madrid. 

To forestall an armed intervention, which the Russians 
were already preparing, the British minister tried to settle 
everything himself by making the two parties accept his 
mediation. In March, 1826, Sir Stratford Canning, cousin 
of the prime minister, thought that, merely by the pressure 
of England, he was on the point of wresting from the Porte 
and imposing upon the Greeks a pacific solution. He asked 
the one party to renounce their " grand idea " of replacing 
the cross of Constantine upon Sancta Sophia and to be con- 
tent at first with having a small but free country. To the 
Ottomans he said that the body of the empire would be 
strengthened by the amputation of a limb in which a germ 
of death was endangering the whole state. By this double- 
faced policy England reckoned upon keeping as her friends 
both the adversaries whom she had reconciled. But the 
Divan, deceived by the successes of the Egyptian army 
which had just captured Misolonghi and which held nearly 
the whole Morea, haughtily rejected these conditions. So 
the only resource was to reach an understanding with the 
Tsar for common action, or else see him reap alone the 
reward of isolated action. 

France, the protectress of the Roman Catholics in the 
Levant, could not hold aloof. Austria, whom every move- 
ment terrified, remained inactive, awaiting events and 
husbanding her strength. Prussia was then too remote to 
interfere. Thus the three Powers, France, Russia and 
England, bound themselves by the Treaty of London (July 
6, 1827) to put an end to the war of extermination which 
had been carried into the Peloponnesus by Ibrahim Pasha, 



A.D. 1827-1829.] PROGRESS OF LIBERAL IDEAS 491 

son of the viceroy of Egypt. The three allied squadrons 
burned the Ottoman fleet in the Bay of Navarino (October 
20, 1827). Over this easy success far too much noise was 
made, and in his speech at the opening of Parliament the 
king of England deplored its occurrence. As the Sultan 
did not yet yield the Russians, who had just conquered Per- 
sian Armenia, declared war against him (April 26, 1828). 
Fifteen thousand Frenchmen disembarked in the Morea to 
aid in settling as quickly as possible this Greek question, 
so small at the beginning but now able to give rise to the 
most dreaded complications. 

Destruction of the Janissaries (1826) . Success of the Rus- 
sians (1828-1829). — The Ottomans were incapable of re- 
sistance. Sultan Mahmoud had just exterminated the 
janissaries, a lawless militia, which had deposed or 
strangled several sultans, but had also victoriously car- 
ried the green standard from Buda to Bagdad. The corps 
had been corrupted by many abuses, which it defended by 
constant rebellions. This soldiery refused to drill or to 
obey, and Mahmoud mowed them down with grape-shot. 
Between the sixteenth and the twenty -second of June, 
1826, in Constantinople alone 10,000 janissaries were slain 
by cannon or the bowstring, or burned alive in their bar- 
racks. Those in the provinces were hunted down in every 
direction. 

The Sultan had just destroyed the inefficient but only 
military force of the empire before organizing another. 
The Russians made rapid progress, capturing Silistria in 
June, 1829, Erzeroum in July and Adrianople in August. 
The Turkish Empire seemed crumbling to pieces. Austria, 
trembling as the Eussians approached the gates of Stam- 
boul, joined France and England in imposing peace upon 
Nicholas. The latter, in spite of a visit to Berlin, could 
not obtain the effective assistance of Prussia. So, on Sep- 
tember 14, 1829, he accepted the Treaty of Adrianople, 
which compelled restoration of his conquests. Neverthe- 
less it gave him the mouths of the Danube, the right for 
his fleets to navigate the Black Sea, thus facilitating a 
direct attack upon Constantinople, and the protectorate 
over Moldavia, Wallachia and Servia. The first two prov- 
inces were to be henceforth governed by hospodars for life 
and the last by a hereditary prince. This treaty, which 
saved Turkey, handed over the Dauubian principalities to 



492 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1828. 

Eussian influence. But the allies hoped that the new- 
Greek state, converted into a monarchy in 1831, would 
serve them as a basis of operations to counteract the diplo- 
macy of the Tsar in the Eastern peninsula. 

Summary. State of the World of 1828. — Without any 
violent revolution, but in consequence of the persevering 
efforts of wise men, France with Martignac, England with 
Canning and Portugal through Dom Pedro, took up again 
liberal traditions. To them Spain was to be led back by 
a change in the law of succession. In the New World ten 
republics were born and the only monarchy which remained 
there had become constitutional. On the old continent the 
new Hellenic state, the work of sentiment as much as of 
politics, had taken its place among the nations on the side 
of free institutions. In Italy, especially at Milan and 
Kome, in Germany, Hesse, Baden, Brunswick and Saxony 
a portentous fermentation announced to unpopular govern- 
ments that revolutions could only be prevented by reforms. 
In Belgium and in Poland, under the lead of the clergy, 
the insurrection of nationalities and of religions was pre- 
paring which antagonistic religions and nationalities wished 
to smother. And lastly, commerce and manufactures, 
which had been developed in the calm of peace, letters, 
which were animated by a breath of renewal, and the peri- 
odical press, which was becoming a power, all favored the 
advance of public spirit toward popular independence and 
individual liberty. Thus, everything warned the govern- 
ments to keep in that great liberal current which was trav- 
ersing the world from one pole to the other, from Paris to 
Lima. Unfortunately there were princes and ministers 
who tried once more to resist that force which some call 
Providence or fate, and which to others is the irresistible 
result of a thousand causes, great or small, by which the 
common life of a nation and of humanity is determined. 



A.D.182y.] NEW EFFORTS AGAINST THE LIBERAL SPIRIT 493 



XXXV 

NEW AND IMPOTENT EFFORTS OF THE OLD REGIME 
AGAINST THE LIBERAL SPIRIT 

Dom Miguel in Portugal (1828). Don Carlos in Spain 

(1827). — Absolutism, astonished and uneasy after its re- 
verses, made a supreme effort to regain possession of the 
countries which had just broken from its control. The 
signal was given by Vienna which, under the direction of 
Prince Metternich, was the citadel of reaction. Dom Miguel 
had taken refuge there and from it kept Portugal in a state 
of incessant agitation, hoping to dethrone his niece, Dona 
Maria, then a child of seven. Dom Pedro had believed he 
could save his daughter's throne by marrying her to Dom 
Miguel and investing him with the regency. The regent 
swore fidelity to the Constitution (February 22, 1828), but 
four months afterwards proclaimed himself king. This 
perjury and usurpation was supported by the English Tories 
and seemed successful at first. Despotism terrorized the 
country. The victims of assassination, execution or ban- 
ishment were numbered by thousands (1829). 

Dom Miguel was the son of a sister of Ferdinand VII. 
The nephew was as bad as the uncle, and the king of Spain 
had given bloody pledges to the absolutists. Nevertheless 
the friend of the Jesuits was deemed too liberal. In 1825 
Bessieres, an adventurer of French origin, took up arms 
"to deliver the king held captive by the negroes" or Con- 
stitutionals. In 1827 the former soldiers of the Army of 
the Faith proclaimed his brother, Don Carlos, the leader 
of the clerical party, as king. This attempt did not suc- 
ceed: but it was the beginning of an interminable war. 
Dom Miguel had rebelled two or three times against his 
father. The representatives of the old regime, the Apos- 
tolicals, as they called themselves in Spain, were accord- 
ingly as revolutionary as their adversaries of 1820. It will 
not be surprising to find soon this same contempt for law 
in the spirit and acts of their friends in France. 



494 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1824-1828. 

The Wellington Ministry (1828). The Diet of Frankfort. 

— Some time after the death of Canning the Tories re- 
turned to power with the Wellington ministry and tried to 
give a different direction to the policy of Great Britain. 
Zeal for the cause of Greece immediately slackened. The 
protection accorded the Portuguese Liberals was withdrawn. 
Wellington recalled the English corps which had been sent 
to the Tagus, stopped by main force an expedition of Con- 
stitutionals, and recognized Dom Miguel as king (1829). 
At home the importation of foreign grain was discouraged. 
The emancipation of the Koman Catholic Irish was opposed 
although O'Connell, "the great agitator," had already begun 
to stir the masses with the cry, "Justice for Ireland." 
Liberal opinion gained strength. In the following year it 
carried the Irish Bill. Lord John Russell, the Whig 
leader, succeeded in passing a resolution which made it no 
longer incumbent on all candidates for offices under the 
crown to prove that they received the sacrament according 
to the rites of the Anglican Church. Hitherto all except 
Episcopalians had been excluded from office. Thus the 
Tories were obliged to bow before the current which was 
flowing toward free institutions. 

Italy, in the stern grasp of Austria, no longer made any 
movement, and Germany was becoming equally silent. 
"Since 1815," wrote a Prussian ambassador, the personal 
friend of his king, "since 1815 we have lived weighed 
down with heavy chains. We have beheld all voices sti- 
fled, even those of the poets, and we have been reduced to 
seeking refuge in the sanctuary of science." Nevertheless, 
reforms in material interests were accomplished. The 
Zollverein was introduced, which suppressed internal cus- 
toms-duties. 

But in defiance of the independence of the Confederated 
States, the Diet of Erankfort in 1824 renewed its declara- 
tion that it would everywhere uphold royalty. That was 
saying in effect that for the simplest reforms the Liberals 
would be obliged to conquer the resistance of their respec- 
tive sovereigns and of the armies of the entire Confedera- 
tion, since the latter was self-appointed judge of whatever 
acts might compromise "the monarchical principle." The 
law was continued which in 1819 had established rigorous 
penalties against the press for a period of five years. A 
commission was further charged with "examining defects 



A.D.182r).] NEW EFFORTS AGAINST THE LIBERAL SPIRIT 495 

ill instruction," so as to subject the rising generation to an 
education in keeping with the spirit of the Holy Alliance. 
Lastly, as the debates of the Diet, hitherto public, seemed 
to disturb men's minds, the assembly decided to hold its 
deliberations in future only behind closed doors. The 
federal government hid itself in the shadow like the in- 
quisitors of Venice. Alexander adopted the same measures 
with regard to the Polish Diet (1825). 

The Tsar Nicholas. — In Russia the nation was summed 
up in one man, the Tsar. The prohibition issued by 
Alexander against bringing into Russia any books which 
treated of politics " in a manner hostile to the principles of 
the Holy Alliance " had been a hindrance to very few 
readers. But the moral contagion, which cannot be kept 
out by a line of custom-houses, crossed the frontier, and 
the new ideas gained a meagre following here and there. 
Alexander's last moments were darkened by the discovery 
of a formidable conspiracy which extended even to the 
army. " What harm have I done them ? " he exclaimed 
sadly. No harm except in seeking to be the intelligence 
and will of 60,000,000 souls. Even in Russia there were 
already men who believed that that role was ended. 

When Alexander died at Taganrog (December, 1825), 
his brother, the G-rand Duke Constantine, voluntarily re- 
peated his renunciation of the crown. Nicholas, a third son 
of Paul II, was proclaimed Tsar. He was a man of iron, 
no harder to others than to himself. Convinced that he 
was a representative of the divine will, he consequently 
acted with perfect calmness, whether ordering the punish- 
ment of an individual, the execution of a people, or a war 
which was to carry off a million men. The plots formed 
under Alexander were not abandoned. Some of the con- 
spirators aimed at overthrowing Tsarism by uniting all the 
Slavic population in one federal republic, like the United 
States. Others thought to force its surrender by imposing 
upon it a constitution. They brought over many regiments 
to their cause. On the day when the garrison of St. Peters- 
burg was to take the oath to the new ruler, the sedition 
broke out. Before nightfall it was crushed. After a 
few executions in the provinces, Russia recognized her 
master in that prince who for a quarter of a century was 
to Europe the haughty and all-powerful incarnation of 
autocracy. 



496 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1829-1830. 

The Polignac Ministry (1829). Capture of Algiers. — 

Thus in Germany, Eussia, and the Iberian and Italian 
peninsulas, the liberal spirit was again repressed. The 
allies of 1815 seemed to have conquered once more. In 
Great Britain it was awakening but under the prudent 
guardianship of the Tories. Hitherto it had been the privi- 
lege of France to move the world. To which side would 
she incline? If she were able to continue her liberal evo- 
lution peacefully, the new light would shine abroad with- 
out a shock and with a penetrating force well-nigh 
irresistible. 

So long as M. de Martignac remained in the government 
the Liberals retained their hopes. Unhappily Charles X, 
docile to the counsels of the Congregation, supported his 
minister without liking him. After eighteen months his 
self-control was exhausted. On August 8, 1829, taking 
advantage of a slight rebuff imprudently inflicted by the 
Chamber on his ministers in a matter of minor importance, 
he replaced them by Messieurs De Polignac, De Labourdon- 
naie, and De Bourmont. The choice of such men by the 
monarch amounted to a declaration of war against the coun- 
try. A crisis was inevitable. For ten months the oppo- 
sition press constantly repeated that the government would 
end of necessity by a coup d'etat, and the deputies declared 
in their address of reply to the king's speech, that the 
ministry did not possess their confidence. The Chamber 
was dissolved, but the 221 signers of the address were re- 
elected. Royalty, vanquished in the elections, decided to 
make its own revolution. 

The military success of the Algerian expedition encour- 
aged this resolve. Thirty-seven thousand French troops, 
under the Count de Bourmont, had landed in Africa to 
avenge an affront to a French consul and had taken posses- 
sion of the country and city of Algiers. The booty seized 
defrayed the cost of the expedition. Since that time Alge- 
ria has been a possession of France. 

The Revolution of 1830. — On the 26th of July ordinances 
appeared which annulled the liberty of the press, rendered 
the last elections void and created a new electoral system. 
This was a coup d'etat against public liberty. It overthrew 
the Charter, on which the return of the Bourbons to the 
throne of their fathers had been conditioned. The magis- 
trates declared these ordinances illegal. Paris replied to 



A.D.1830.] NEW EFFORTS AGAINST THE LIBERAL SPIRIT 497 

the provocation of the court by the three days of July 27, 
28 and 29, 1830. This time resistance was legitimate, 
since both the burghers and populace fought those who 
had infringed the Constitution. Despite the bravery of the 
royal guard and of the Swiss, Charles X was vanquished. 
AVhen he offered to withdraw the ordinances and then abdi- 
cated in favor of his grandson, the Duke de Bordeaux, he 
was answered by the watchword of revolutions, " It is too 
late." He again went into exile. Six thousand men had 
been slain or wounded. They were victims to the obstinacy 
of an old man, who, in the words of Royer-Collard, " had 
set up his government counter to society as if it existed 
against society, as if to give society the lie and defy it." 
France saluted with almost unanimous acclamations this 
separation from the men and ideas of 1815. In again 
adopting the flag of 1789, she seemed also to be regaining 
possession of herself. She seemed to be winning the liber- 
ties which the Eevolution had promised but had not yet 
bestowed. Reverentially she was about to divorce religion 
from politics in order to restore it to the place which it 
ought never to have quitted, in the temple and the individual 
conscience. 

2k 



498 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1830. 



/ 



XXXVI 

CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION OF JULY IN 
FRANCE. STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE LIBERAL CON- 
SERVATIVES AND THE REPUBLICANS 

(1830-1840) 

Character of the Period comprised between 1830 and 1840. 

— Under the Restoration only two policies found them- 
selves face to face. These were the policy of the Holy 
Alliance and that of the liberals. Thus the victory of 
that period is a summary of the obscure or brilliant, the 
generous or criminal, struggle between these two principles. 
After 1830 this conflict continued but was complicated by 
new interests. 

The revolution of July, 1830, which in certain countries 
assured the victory to liberal ideas, seemed to promise it to 
others which it incited to insurrection. Meanwhile the 
half -ruined alliance of 1815 made an effort to maintain 
itself. If the western Powers, France, England, Belgium, 
Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, escaped therefrom for- 
ever, the central and eastern states, Prussia, Austria and 
Russia, remained faithful to that alliance. But the prin- 
ciple of free society daily enlarged its scope like a sea which 
eats away its shores and thrusts its waves always farther 
inland. Thus gradually spreading it agitated Italy, shook 
Germany and raised Poland a moment from her bier. 

The principal representative of the spirit of reaction in 
the preceding period had been Prince Metternich, with his 
calm skill and his cautious and temporizing policy. Now 
the Emperor Nicholas was its highest expression by his im- 
placable energy and his activity as well as by the grandeur 
of his plans. 

But new questions arise and divert attention from internal 
anxieties. The immense heritage of the Turkish Empire 
seemed about opening up, and men asked themselves un- 
easily who were to be its heirs. Egypt, on the shortest 



A..D. 1830.] FRANCE AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 499 

road to India, was becoming civilized under a barbarian 
genius and the maritime powers were quarrelling over their 
influence on the Nile. Central Asia became the battlefield 
for the rival intrigues of England and Russia. The bar- 
riers which shut oft" the extreme East opened a little and 
were soon to fall before the commerce of the world. The 
activity of mankind expanded. From 1789 to 1815 men 
thought only of France, victorious or vanquished, and forgot 
Asia, where England was growing strong, and the New 
World, where the American Republic was noiselessly 
becoming a giant. Between 1815 and 1830 attention, still 
centred upon Europe, turned aside for a moment only to 
behold the birth of the new states of Spanish America. 
In the third period one must go from pole to pole, would 
he keep pace with civilization which wishes to complete its 
possession of the globe by commerce or by war, its two 
mighty instruments. 

King Louis Philippe. — La Fayette said to the people at 
the city hall, pointing toward the Duke of Orleans, " There 
is the best of republics." Many thought like La Fayette. 
The private virtues of the prince, his noble family, his 
former relations with the leaders of the liberal party, the 
carefully revived memories of Jemmapes and Valmy, his 
simple habits and the popular education given to his sons 
in the public schools — all encouraged the hopes of the 
people. 

The Duke of Orleans, the head of the younger branch of 
the house of Bourbon, was proclaimed king on August 9, 
after having sworn to observe the revised charter. The 
changes then made in the constitutional compact, or during 
the following months in the existing laws, were unimpor- 
tant. The heredity of the peerage and the censorship of 
the press were abolished. The qualification for election 
was fixed at 500 francs and the qualification to serve as an 
elector at 200 francs. Thus the political rights of persons 
of fortune were maintained without specially stipulating 
those of intelligence. The article was suppressed which 
recognized the Roman Catholic religion as the state reli- 
gion, and all the peerages created by Charles X were abol- 
ished. But in 1814 Louis XVIII had seemed to grant a 
charter of his own good will. In 1830 Louis Philippe 
accepted one which the deputies imposed. Therein lay the 
whole revolution. Nevertheless the fact must not be for- 



500 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1830. 

gotten that rights, first violated by royalty, had been again 
violated by the Chamber, since the deputies had disposed 
of tlie crown and re-made the Constitution without a man- 
date from the country. This will prove for the Orleans 
dynasty an incurable source of weakness. The govern- 
ment, born of a fact and not of a principle, will not enjoy 
either the force formerly conferred by legitimacy or that 
which is to-day conferred by the national expression. 

The Laffitte 'Ministry (1830). — The shock caused by the 
fall of the Restoration had imparted an unexpected strength 
to the republican party. This party must be taken into 
account first of all. It was flattered for awhile in the 
person of two men whom the republicans respected. Gen- 
eral La Payette, who was appointed commander of all the 
national guard of France, and M. Laffitte, who was called 
to the ministry (iSTovember 2). The popularity of the for- 
mer was cleverly exploited until after the trial of the min- 
isters of Charles X, and that of the second until the moment 
when it became necessary to make a plain declaration of 
sentiments on foreign policy. 

France had the distinguished honor of riveting the atten- 
tion of the world upon herself. At the crash of the throne 
which crumbled at Paris all the unpopular powers were 
compromised. We shall soon see that in Switzerland the 
aristocratic governments fell, and that liberal innovations 
were introduced into Germany. Italy was quivering with 
excitement. Spain was preparing a revolution. Belgium 
was separating from Holland. England herself, troubled 
and agitated, was on the point of wresting the Reform Bill 
from the Tories. Peace was more profitable to liberty than 
war and French ideas re-won the conquests which French 
arms had lost. 

But was France to champion every European insurrection 
at the risk of inciting a general war and of shedding torrents 
of blood? The new king did not think so. Belgium had 
separated from Holland and wished to unite with France. 
Her advances were discouraged for fear of exciting the jeal- 
ousy of England. Tlie Spanish refugees wanted to make a 
revolution in their country. They were arrested on the 
frontier so that international law should not be violated 
even against a prince who was a secret enemy. Poland, 
liberated for a few moments by a heroic effort, appealed to 
France. Was it possible to s^ve her by arms? As the 



A.D. 1831.] FRANCE AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 501 

Poles themselves said in their national calamity, " God is 
too high and France is too far." The meagre assistance 
sent to her did not prevent Warsaw from succumbing. 
Its fall found a sad echo in the heart of every Frenchman. 
Italy, bound hand and foot by Austria, strove to break her 
chains. M. Laffitte wished to aid her. The king refused 
to follow his advice and called Casimir-Perier to the presi- 
dency of the Council. 

The Casimir-Perier Ministry (1831). — This policy was 
esteemed too prudent. Casimir-Perier imparted to it a 
momentary grandeur by the energy with which he supported 
this system of moderation. He made two distinct declara- 
tions. The first was, that he desired order and legality, 
and consequently would combat the republicans and le- 
gitimists to the death if they employed riots to effect the 
triumph of their opinions; the second was that he would 
not plunge France into a universal war and consequently 
for the sake of peace would make every sacrifice compatible 
with the honor of the country. This haughty language was 
supported by deeds. Dom Miguel in Portugal had mal- 
treated two Frenchmen. A fleet forced the defences of the 
Tagus, which were reputed impassable, and anchored 300 
fathoms from the quays of Lisbon. The Portuguese min- 
isters humbly made proper reparation. The Dutch invaded 
Belgium. Fifty thousand French entered the country and 
the flag of the Netherlands retreated. The Austrians who 
had once left the pontifical states returned thither. Casi- 
mir-Perier, determined to enforce the principle of non- 
intervention, sent a flotilla into the Adriatic, and troops 
landed and seized Ancona. This appearance of the tri- 
colored flag in the centre of Italy was almost equivalent to 
a declaration of war. Austria did not accept the challenge 
but withdrew her troops. 

At home the President of the Council followed with the 
same energy the line of conduct which he had marked out 
for himself. The legitimists were disturbing the western 
departments. Flying columns stifled the revolt. The 
workmen of Lyons, excited by their misery but also by agi- 
tators, rose, inscribing on their banners this plaintive and. 
sinister motto: "To work and live or to fight and die." 
After a horrible conflict in the heart of the city they were 
disarmed and on the surface order seemed to be restored. 
Grenoble was a scene of blood in its turn. The so-called 



502 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1832^ 

plots of Notre Dame and of the Rue des Prouvaires broke 
out in Paris. 

Such was the ministry of Casimir-P^rier, an energetic 
struggle in which his strong will did not recoil at any ob- 
stacle for the cause of order. Colleagues, Chambers, the 
king himself, he dominated over them all. Such a life 
had exhausted his strength when he was stricken down by 
cholera (May 16, 1832). 

Ministry of October 11, 1832. — Society was profoundly 
undermined by the partisans of Saint Simon and Pourier, 
who demanded another social order. These men as yet 
played the part of pacific apostles only, but the insurrection 
in Lyons had revealed the masses as an army fully prepared 
to apply their doctrines. The national guard with energy 
defended royalty when, after the funeral of General La- 
marque, the republicans fought and lost the battle of June 
5 and 6 behind the barricades of Saint Mery. This check 
disconcerted their party for a time. A month later the 
death of the Duke of Reichstadt, the son of Napoleon, re- 
moved a formidable rival from the Orleans djmasty, which 
at the same time seemed to gain support by the marriage 
of Princess Louise to the king of the Belgians. 

Another claimant also lost an opportunity. The Duchess 
de Berri had secretly landed on the coast of Provence with 
the title of regent, and endeavored to kindle civil war in 
the west in the name of her son, Henry V. But there 
were no longer either Vendeans or Chouans. The new 
ideas had penetrated thither almost more than elsewhere. 
"These people are patriots and republicans," said an 
officer, charged with fighting them. The country was 
promptly pacified and the duchess, after wandering from 
farmhouse to farmhouse, entered Nantes disguised as a 
peasant woman. Her adventurous freak showed the weak- 
ness of the legitimists. To complete their overthrow, M. 
Thiers, then minister, caused active search to be made for 
the duchess. She was found and confined at Blaye, where 
circumstances forced her to acknowledge a secret marriage 
which rendered all similar attempts in the future impossible. 

Success Abroad. — Certain results of the French foreign 
policy reacted on their domestic policy. Thus the capture 
by French troops of the citadel of Antwerp, which the 
Dutch refused to restore to the Belgians, terminated a 
critical situation which might any moment have brought 



1835.] FRANCE AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 503 

on war. Further acquisitions in Africa as well as an expe- 
dition to the banks of the Scheldt cast a little glory on the 
French army. 

In the East French diplomacy mediated between the 
Sultan and his victorious vassal, Mehmet Ali, the pasha 
of Egypt. The treaty of Kutaieh, which left Syria to 
Mehmet Ali, strengthened the viceroy of Egypt, the 
guardian in behalf of Europe of the two chief commercial 
routes of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf which England 
wished to seize. 

In Portugal Dom Miguel, an absolutist prince, was de- 
throned and replaced by Dona Maria, who gave her people 
a constitutional charter (1834). In Spain Ferdinand VII 
died (1834), excluding from the succession his brother, Don 
Carlos, who was upheld by the retrograde party. Thus 
the whole peninsula might escape at the same time from 
the absolutist party had England and France been ready to 
combine and prevent another Congress of Laibach or 
Verona. The treaty of the Quadruple Alliance, signed on 
April 22, 1834, between the courts of Paris, London, Lis- 
bon and Madrid, did, in fact, promise to the new Spanish 
and Portuguese governments the support of the two great 
constitutional countries against the ill-will of the northern 
courts. An army corps of 50,000 men was formed at the 
foot of the Pyrenees for the purpose of supporting, in case 
of need, the young Queen Isabella against the Spanish le- 
gitimists, the natural allies of the French legitimists. 

Insurrections at Lyons and at Paris (1834). Attempt of 
Fieschi (1835). — At home the Chambers had at last passed 
a law organizing primary instruction (1833). In Parlia- 
ment, on important questions, the ministry was sure of the 
majority. Though the jury often acquitted persons accused 
of political crimes, the army was faithful, and the first 
attempt against the life of the king caused royalty to profit 
by the horror which such crimes always inspire. " Well ! 
They have fired at me," said the king. "Sire," replied 
Dupin, "they have fired at themselves." 

The insurrections of April, 1834, at Lyons and at Paris, 
and the dramatic incidents of the trial of 164 republicans 
before the Court of Peers, led to the imprisonment or flight 
of nearly all their leaders and the momentary ruin of that 
party as a militant faction. 

Meanwhile the violent had recourse again to assassina- 



504 HISTOEY OF MODERX TIMES [a .d. 1835- 

tion. At the review of July 28, 1835, Fieschi, a returned 
convict and forger, directed an infernal machine at the 
king. Eighteen persons were killed and twenty wounded. 
Among the slain was Marshal Mortier. 

This horrible attempt appalled society. The ministry 
took advantage of the universal indignation to present the 
Laws of September concerning the Court of Assizes, the 
jury and the press. They were planned to render punish- 
ment for crime more severe and more prompt. They pro- 
hibited all discussion as to the principles of the government 
and curtailed the press. 

The Thiers Ministry (1836). — The cause of order, ear- 
nestl}^ upheld at 'home, was now triumphant. M. Thiers, 
President of the ^linisterial Council after February 22, 
1836, wished to repeat the foreign policy of Casimir-Perier. 
The Spanish Carlists were making threatening progress in 
the peninsula. M. Thiers decided to interfere. England 
herself requested it. This course indicated closer relations 
with that power and the intention of defending liberal ideas 
in Europe. The memory of the unfortunate intervention 
of 1823 would thus have been gloriously effaced. 

The same ministry conceived and prepared another expe- 
dition. Desirous of further acquisitions in Algeria, M. 
Thiers ordered Marshal Clausel to attack Constantine, one 
of the strongest fortresses in Africa. He also intended to 
have General Bugeaud enter Spain at the head of 12,000 
men. Thus the government, which had put down troubles 
at home, was about to exercise the activity of France abroad. 
The timorous king gave his consent to the expedition 
against Constantine, because cannon-shots fired in Africa, 
he said, were not heard in Europe ; but he would allow no 
intervention in Spain. M. Thiers, rather than yield, 
quitted the ministry, where he was replaced by M. Mole as 
President of the Council. 

The Mole Ministry (1836-1839). —The first part of M. 
Mole's ministry was marked by misfortunes. Marshal 
Clausel, whose forces were insufficient, failed in the expe- 
dition against Constantine. Prince Louis, the nephew of 
Napoleon, tried to rouse the garrison of Strasburg to re- 
volt. He was arrested and conducted beyond the frontiers. 
His accomplices were brought before the jury, which dis- 
charged them because the principal culprit had been re- 
moved from its jurisdiction. This verdict displeased the 



18.S0.] FRANCE AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 505 

court. The ministry proposed a peculiar law which aimed 
at trying citizens and soldiers by different courts though 
accused of the same crime. The Chamber rejected it. 

These checks were relieved during the following year by 
some successes. The army at last planted its flag upon the 
walls of Constantine (1837). To end a long standing quar- 
rel with Mexico an expedition was despatched which took 
possession of Vera Cruz. Mexico paid a war indemnity. 
The Prince de Joinville was on the fleet. He displayed 
the same courage which his brothers had often shown in 
Africa. The birth of a son to the Duke of Orleans, to 
whom the king gave the name of Count of Paris, seemed 
to consolidate the dynasty. 

But vigorous attacks upon the ministry were already 
preparing in the heart of Parliament. M. Mole had just 
recalled the French troops from Ancona in compliance with 
the terms of the treaty of 1833. It was asserted that the 
removal of the tri-colored flag from Ancona was a humilia- 
tion to France in Europe and the abandonment of a precious 
guarantee against Austria. French diplomacy was no more 
happy in the final regulation of the Dutch-Belgian affair. 
The Belgians by their revolution had aimed at separating 
two peoples of different language, religion and interests. 
But the treaty of the twenty-four articles, accepted by the 
French ministry, ceded to the king of Holland Belgian 
populations which had fought against him. Europe would 
not allow the friendly province of Luxemburg to be annexed 
to France, which would have covered a vulnerable point in 
the French frontier. 

AVith a little more regard for the national honor and with 
a little more confidence in the national strength, it was said 
that those concessions for peace at any price might have 
been spared. But the real pretext of these attacks was 
what was called the insufficiency of the ministry. M. 
Guizot, the leader of the doctrinaires, who were a small but 
talented and ambitious party; M. Thiers, the leader of the 
Left Centre which vigorously condemned personal govern- 
ment; and M. Odilon Barrot, leader of the deputies op- 
posed to the policy, but devoted to the person of the king, 
formed a coalition with the motto of 1830: "The king 
reigns, but does not govern." The ministry wished to 
resign. The king, whose cause was at stake, refused to 
allow it, and appealed to the country by dissolving the 



506 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1839. 

Chamber. The ministry fought vigorously in the electoral 
battle, but was vanquished and fell. Jealousies in the dis- 
tribution of offices caused the coalition to disband the day 
after its victory. Difficulties over the formation of a new 
ministry kept Paris in suspense for more than a month. 
Certain republicans, with more faith in gunshots than in 
the propaganda of ideas, attempted a revolution. They 
could not even get up a riot. 

Ministry of Marshal Soult (1839). — At last a cabinet was 
formed under the presidency of Marshal Soult. None of 
the leaders of the coalition were members of it. Therefore 
it could be nothing but a Ministry ad interim. It did not 
last ten months. 

Meanwhile, the Emir Abd-el Kader in Africa proclaimed 
the Holy War. Within two months the regular infantry of 
the Moslem chieftain was crushed at the battle of Chiifa. 
Still the great concern of this cabinet was not Algiers, but 
the redoubtable Eastern question, as we shall see later on. 



A.D. 1830-1832.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION 50* 



XXXVII 

CONSEQUENCES IN EUROPE OF THE REVOLUTION OF 

JULY 

(1830-1840) 

General State of Europe in 1830. — The revolution of 
July was not the cause of the memorable events which oc- 
curred in Europe after the three days of Paris. Everything 
was ripe in England for the fall of the Tories ; in Belgium, 
Italy and Poland for a national insurrection ; in Spain and 
Portugal and in the bosom of the Germanic Confederation 
for enforcing the complaints of the constitutionals. The 
repressive policy, followed by the great states after 1815, 
had prepared the inflammable materials upon which fell a 
spark from the conflict at Paris. Then the fire burst out in 
every direction. At certain points it did its work and 
cleared the ground for new edifices. At others it was 
stopped, smothered for the moment. Some of the nations 
abandoned the system of authority for the contract system. 
That is, they repudiated the theory of aristocratic or royal 
rights and adopted that of the rights of the nation. Other 
peoples, held to the earth by powerful hands, moved rest- 
lessly, but were unable to gain their feet. 

England. Whig Ministry (1830). The Reform Bill 
(1831-1832). — The first Parliament which assembled at 
London after the French Revolution of 1830 overthrew the 
Tory ministry, despite its illustrious leader, the Duke of 
Wellington. The Whigs assumed the direction of affairs 
and introduced a Reform Bill which suppressed fifty-six 
rotten boroughs, gave representation to the towns which 
had none, and created a multitude of new electors by 
lowering the electoral requirement in the towns to a house- 
hold franchise of ten pounds sterling. Thus the English 
reform was much more liberal than the French. Thus the 
number of electors was almost doubled. England alone 
then had more than 800,000. But we shall see in 1848 the 



508 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1830-1833. 

fate of the Orleans monarchy staked on the question of 
adding 24,000 electors to a body of voters only a fourth as 
numerous as the voters in aristocratic England. Yet the 
population of the latter country was only half that of 
France. For fourteen months the Lords resisted the Com- 
mons, the ministers, the king himself, as well as popular 
demonstrations which brought together as many as 300,000 
persons. They only yielded before the threat of the crea- 
tion of enough liberal peers to change the majority. The 
Whigs also made Parliament pass two other liberal meas- 
ures. The one in 1833 emancipated 600,000 negroes. This 
cost England 16,500,000 pounds sterling. The other in 
the following year was the new Poor Law which, while 
relieving distress, diminished the expenditure. In order 
to induce the Lords to accept the Reform Bill, Wellington, 
the Tory leader, had acknowledged sadly that the time was 
when the upper Chamber could make its sentiments pre- 
vail; that England must resign herself to wishing what 
the Commons wished. The English aristocracy, the strong- 
est and richest in the world, and also the one which, during 
the past century and a half, had displayed the most politi- 
cal sagacity, announced in plaintive words its abdication as 
a governing class. The useful function was left it, which 
it has well fulfilled even to the present hour, of acting as 
a moderator or restrainer. Such a curb is as necessary in 
those great organisms called states as in powerful and 
dangerous machines of industry. 

Thus, in the credit column of the revolution of July 
must be set down its influence upon the English people. 
This influence was bloodless and useful to both countries. 
In helping to hurl the Tories from power and elevating the 
Liberals to their place, France secured friends on the other 
side of the Channel. King Louis Philippe was able to 
offset the cold and haughty attitude of the courts of Ger- 
many and Russia by the "cordial understanding" with 
England. Hence tjie two western Powers, united for many 
years by a community of ideas and interests, were able to 
check reactionary ambitions and- favor the legitimate 
aspirations of the peoples. 

The first fruit of this alliance was the pacific solution of 
the Belgian question. 

Belgian Revolution (August and September, 1830). — In 
1815 the English had had Belgium given to Holland as in- 



A. D. 1831-1833.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION 509 

demnity for the Dutch colonies which they wished to keep. 
Moreover, they had descried in this combination a means of 
repressing and keeping watch upon France from the north- 
east. But Belgium, which had the French language, French 
laws and the French religion, felt the same repugnance as 
in the sixteenth century to joining the Batavian provinces. 
The king of the Netherlands increased this antipathy by 
quarrels with the Koman Catholic clergy and with the 
court of Rome. He prohibited French in the schools and 
law-courts and forbade the students of his kingdom to attend 
foreign universities. Writers were thrown into prison; 
journalists were condemned. Such was the irritation of the 
Belgians in 1829 that innumerable petitions addressed to 
the two Chambers protested against the abuses of authority 
perpetrated by the government. Thus, one month after 
the Paris revolution Brussels took fire. All the towns of 
Brabant and Flanders followed its example, and the Dutch 
army was driven back upon the citadel of Antwerp, the 
only point in the Belgian territory which remained to it. 
England had viewed with displeasure this overthrow of 
the work of 1815. She lived in dread that France would 
occupy Antwerp and thus hold the mouths of the Scheldt 
and Meuse. The Speech from the Throne, drawn up by 
the Tory IMinistry, censured the Revolution of Brabant. 
The broader spirit of the Whigs, aided by the moderation 
of Louis Philippe, prevented complications. In the con- 
ference which assembled at London on November 4, 1830, 
the northern Powers themselves acknowledged the impos- 
sibility of maintaining the union under the same sceptre of 
two so different populations. It was decided to permit the 
organization of a Belgian kingdom on the sole condition 
that the king should not be selected from any one of the 
five royal houses whose representatives sat in the confer- 
ence. Thus, when the Congress of Brussels elected the 
Duke de Nemours, the second son of Louis Philippe, that 
prince refused for his house an honor which would have 
imperilled France (February, 1831). A few months later 
another election called to the throne of Belgium the Prince 
of Saxe-Coburg, whose sagacity assured the new state an 
unflagging prosperit}'' through forty years. The conference 
finished its work by deciding that 50,000 French troops 
should enter Belgium to repel the aggression of the Dutch. 
The capture of Antwerp, after operations memorable for the 



510 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1831. 

skill of both the besiegers and the besieged, settled the 
question from a military point of view. Diplomacy spent 
more than six years in reaching the point of persuading the 
two parties to sign the definite treaty in April, 1839. The 
perpetual neutrality of Belgium was recognized by all 
the Powers. 

Liberal Modifications in the Constitutions of Switzerland 
(1831), of Denmark (1831) and of Sweden (1840). — In 
northern countries, whether it be those regions which in- 
cline toward the pole or those which, under a less elevated 
latitude, lie at the foot of Alpine glaciers, passion is less 
vigorous and action is more restrained. Switzerland in 
1815 was compelled to conform to the Holy Alliance. The 
wealthier classes of Europe and America did not then as 
now every summer flock to the mountains and spend their 
money. The principal source of revenue was the wages of 
Swiss regiments at Rome, Naples, Madrid, in France, and 
even in the Netherlands. Until 1830 Switzerland was 
necessarily deferential to the powers of the day. She tol- 
erated the Jesuits in the Valais and at Freiburg. At the 
demand of foreign ministers she dealt severely with the 
press and restricted the right of asylum which refugees from 
every land invoked on her soil. On the news that France 
was freeing herself from the reactionary policy, nearly all 
the cantons, by legal means and the pressure of public opin- 
ion, demanded more liberal institutions. Austria massed 
troops in the Vorarlberg and the Tyrol to intimidate the 
Liberals, but the Diet decreed a levy of 60,000 men and 
100,000 took up arms. The sovereigns, menaced by the 
Belgian revolution and the ever increasing agitation of Italy 
and Germany, made haste to send assurances of peace. 
Abandoned to themselves the aristocratic governments of 
Switzerland crumbled to pieces. The nobles lost their 
former immunities, and that wise people effected its politi- 
cal evolution without shedding a drop of blood. Only later 
on were there violent disturbances at Neuchatel, whose 
inhabitants rebelled against the king of Prussia, their 
sovereign, and at Basle, where the burghers insisted upon 
retaining privileges to the detriment of the rural communes. 

Denmark did not experience even these slight disorders. 
The king, of his own initiative, instituted four provincial 
assemblies for the Islands, Jutland, Schleswig, and Hol- 
stein (1831). Later on he gave a General Diet to the 



A.D. 1832-1834.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION 511 

whole kingdom (1849). Sweden was still more patient. 
Permeated after 1830 by liberal ideas, she waited until 1840. 
Then she reconstructed her government by instituting two 
elective chambers, made the ministers responsible, and 
abolished the hereditary rights of the nobility, although 
maintaining the distinction of orders. 

Revolutions in Spain (1833) and in Portugal (1834). 
Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance (1834). —The South, 
where passions are more ardent, was disturbed by armed 
insurrections and revolutions. At Madrid Ferdinand VII 
still satisfied the heart of the absolutists. At first he re- 
fused to recognize the new king of France and encouraged 
by sympathy at least the mad enterprise of the Duchess of 
Berri. But he exhumed a secret declaration of Charles IV 
in 1789 which revoked the pragmatic sanction of Philip V. 
That sanction allowed a daughter to ascend the throne only 
in default of sons. This declaration was a return to the 
ancient law of succession, which had formed the greatness 
of Spain by the union of Aragon and Castile under Isabella 
the Catholic, and which had bestowed the crown on Charles 
V. Moreover, the king felt no scruples at dispossessing 
his brother, Don Carlos, who had twice tried to dethrone 
him. Maria Christina gave birth to a daughter, Isabella, 
who, on the death of Ferdinand, became queen in Septem- 
ber, 1833, under the guardianship of her mother. The 
"apostolicals," trampling on national traditions and faith- 
less to their principle of the divine right of kings which 
had permitted Charles II in 1700 to bequeath his peoples 
as his own property even to a stranger, took the part of 
Don Carlos. He prepared to claim the throne sword in 
hand. In consequence the regent, to save the crown for 
her daughter, was obliged to seek the support of the con- 
stitutionals. Thus a family quarrel was destined to re- 
store the Spanish government to the Liberal party; but a 
civil war of seven years' duration was unchained upon the 
peninsula. 

Don Carlos first took refuge with Dom Miguel who, aided 
by Marshal Bourmont, by French legitimists, and the ab- 
solutists of Portugal, was defending his usurpation against 
his brother, Dom Pedro. The latter was upheld by the 
effectual sympathy of France and England. On July 8, 
1832, the constitutionals seized Oporto. In the following 
year the victories of Saint Vincent and Lisbon put them in 



512 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1834-1835. 

possession of the capital. At last the treaty of the Quad- 
ruple Alliance was concluded in April, 1834, with England 
and France by Dom Pedro and Maria Christina in the name 
of their daughters, the young Queens Dona Maria and 
Isabella II. This constrained Dom Miguel to leave the 
kingdom. 

Thus defeated in Portugal, the absolutists understood 
that they must hold their ground in Spain or their cause 
would be lost in Western Europe and compromised every- 
where. Don Carlos raised the northern provinces to insur- 
rection, and especially the whole Basque country, which 
was still devoted to its ancient fueros and hostile to cen- 
tralization at Madrid. The Carlist bands infested all the 
Pyrenees. Under Gomez and Cabrera they penetrated to 
the environs of Madrid. Zumalacarreguy even succeeded 
for a time in substituting the guerilla conflicts, which settle 
nothing, by war on a great scale, which might end every- 
thing. He was mortally wounded in 1835 before Bilbao. 

The Carlists had summoned to their aid all those whom 
the revolution of July had vanquished or menaced. As 
a matter of course the partisans of Henry V upheld the 
Spanish pretender. But it was impossible for the northern 
courts to send him regular forces. The fleets of England 
and France barred the sea and the Pyrenees were remote 
from Vienna, Berlin and Moscow. The Tsar looked with 
wrath upon this struggle which was going on far from his 
reach. Secret encouragement and subsidies came above all 
from Naples and St. Petersburg. For their part the western 
Powers encouraged the formation of English and French 
legions, which were veritable armies. The French legion 
numbered 7000 men (1835). Thus the two policies, which 
divided Europe between them, did not dare to come into 
direct collision, but fought at a distance, and by intermedi- 
aries, on the banks of the Ebro. This was because Austria 
and Prussia, who felt Italy and Germany quivering beneath 
them, hesitated to unlease the dogs of war, and because 
Louis Philippe, despite his alliance with England, did not 
wish to endanger the general peace by less discreet and 
indirect intervention. 

The struggle was conducted with the horrors usual in 
Spanish wars, although in the ranks of both parties were 
many volunteers. Some had joined out of devotion to a 
cause or to serve a military apprenticeship. Others came 



A.D. 1831-1833.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION 513 

from the curiosity of a tourist or even to give vent to rest- 
lessness and love of adventure. Instead of hunting the 
wolf and the wild boar a man passed a spring or autumn in 
hunting the Christines or the Carlists in the mountains. 
This lasted until 1840 amid sanguinary vicissitudes and 
political intrigues which overthrew many ministries at 
Madrid. Espartero, whom the regent pompously created 
Duke de la Victoria, put an end to the Carlist war and 
then expelled Maria Christina (October, 1840) and usurped 
her place as regent. Three years later he was expelled 
in turn by Narvaez (July, 1843). Under the hand of this 
rough soldier the Spanish monarchy became almost consti- 
tutional though strongly conservative. 

Impotent Efforts of the Liberals in Germany and Italy 
(1831). Defeat of the Polish Insurrection (1831). —Thus, 
Northern Europe and all the West entered into the move- 
ment which began on the fall of Charles X. Other coun- 
tries would gladly have followed this example, but they 
found themselves restrained by bonds too strong to be 
broken. Their princes cherished aversion and wrath, which 
they did not always control, for what had just taken place 
in France. 

The consequences of the revolution of July did not make 
themselves felt, at least ostensibly, in the two great German 
monarchies. Absolute power in Austria and Prussia was 
protected by a powerful military establishment, by the 
alliance of the government at both Berlin and Vienna with 
the state church, by the support of a numerous nobility 
which took for its motto "God and the king," and by the 
politic reserve of a burgher class on whom manufactures and 
commerce had not as yet bestowed fortune, and with it the 
sense of strength and a legitimate pride. Frederick Wil- 
liam III contented himself by relaxing the control of the 
press and by rendering censorship more mild. These con- 
cessions were not dangerous. Moreover, he counterbal- 
anced them by the advantages which resulted for Prussia 
from the completion of the Zollverein. Thus he turned 
men's minds aside from burning questions of government 
and paved the way for the political hegemony of Prussia 
by her commercial hegemony (May 11, 1833). 

Things went on otherwise in the petty states. Bruns- 
wick, the two Hesses, Saxony, Hanover, Oldenburg and 
Bavaria were agitated by movements which dethroned many 
2l 



514 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1832-1833. 

princes and obliged others to concede charters and reforms. 
But, when Russia had " caused order to reign in Warsaw " 
and when the French government had triumphed over the 
revolutionary spirit by its victory over both the legitimists 
and the republicans, the diplomats of Austria and Prussia 
returned to the stage and again put in action the Diet of 
Frankfort, a convenient instrument on which they played 
to perfection. The Diet was still presided over by Austria 
and was under her influence. In June, 1832, it decreed 
that the princes required the cooperation of the represen- 
tative assemblies only for the exercise of certain rights, 
and that these assemblies could not refuse the means neces- 
sary for the execution of the measures which interested the 
Confederation as a whole. A commission was appointed 
to watch over the deliberations of the Chambers, as com- 
missions had already been appointed to keep an eye upon 
the press and education. Of these three suspects Prince 
Metternich never lost sight. Another regulation ordered 
the princes to lend each other mutual aid and to surrender 
to each other political prisoners. A few months later 
(August, 1833) the two great Powers, who distrusted the 
activity of the Diet and the energy of its commissioners, 
had themselves authorized to constitute a commission whose 
task was to put a stop to revolutionary attempts. In this 
commission they admitted the representatives of Bavaria, 
so as to disguise the sort of abdication which the Diet had 
just made into their hands. Arrests and proscriptions 
began again all over Germany. The Tsar, who had come 
to Miinchengratz in Bohemia for the purpose of personally 
strengthening the sovereigns of Prussia and Austria in their 
ideas of resistance, obtained from them the expulsion of the 
Polish refugees who were to be transported to America. 

One can realize how much liberty remained to the thirty- 
nine states whose independence had been recognized by 
the Congress of Vienna. From her hatred of liberal insti- 
tutions Austria was constantly inciting the Diet to encroach 
upon the sovereignty of the princes. Thus, little by little, 
the Confederation became a motley body which lacked only 
a head. Austria was firmly convinced that she was destined 
to become that head. But on the day when the stage cur- 
tain of Frankfort was torn away, it was Prussia which was 
to appear, victorious and menacing with her motto, " Might 
makes right." Prince Metternich was to learn too late that 



A.D. 1831-1832.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION 515 

he had toiled for half a century only to aid Austria's rival 
and to enable her without scruple to dethrone kings and 
humiliate kings and effect the unity of Germany against 
Austria quite as much as against France. 

In Italy the king of Naples, Ferdinand II, reassured by 
the paid fidelity of his Swiss regiments, waited for an in- 
surrection which every one foresaw. Louis Philippe, his 
brother-in-law, sent him a memorandum of General Pepe, 
indicating the reforms which must be made in order to 
avert a catastrophe. He read it, returned thanks, and re- 
plied, like Caesar, ''They will not dare." He was right so 
far as Naples was concerned, at least during his lifetime. 
But on February 4, 1831, Bologna rose, then Umbria and 
the Romagna, and at the end of a month the Pope retained 
hardly more than the Roman Campagna. The brothers, 
Charles and Louis Napoleon, offered their aid to the leaders 
of the insurrection, in which the former lost his life. 
Parma and Modena also expelled their princes. The 
Austrians seized upon this pretext to cross the Po, reestab- 
lish the fugitives, and crush the movement in the Romagna. 

The Italian patriots had counted upon France. The 
French government announced to the Powers that its for- 
eign policy would be regulated by the principle of non- 
intervention; but it had no idea of going to war for the 
purpose of forcing this principle into European law. So 
the Austrians were left free to overwhelm the inhabitants 
of the Romagna and to violate the conventions which they 
had signed. Only when they seemed to be establishing 
themselves permanently in Ferrara and Bologna Louis 
Philippe occupied Ancona for seven years. This action 
possessed a certain grandeur and exercised due influence. 
Following the example of the king of Naples, the Pope 
hired a small army of mercenaries. The States of the 
Church presented the singular spectacle of the sovereign 
pontiff living under the protection of foreign bayonets ; for 
the Swiss were at Rome, the French at Ancona and the 
Austrians at Bologna. In the midst of these trans-Alpine 
troops the cardinals, and legates administered affairs and 
judged and condemned to exile, to prison and the galleys 
just as under the paternal absolutist governments. But the 
five great Powers recognized the fact that the spirit of re- 
volt was being nursed in a manner dangerous to the repose 
of Europe by such a detestable administration. At the 



516 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a. d. 1830-1831, 

invitation of France they drew up the memorandum of 
May, 1831, in which they begged the Holy Father to grant 
certain civil rights to laymen and to introduce certain re- 
forms. Cardinal Bernetti promised "a new era," but, the 
danger once past, everything went on as before. From one 
end of the peninsula to the other, except in Tuscany and 
Piedmont, the rigors of 1816 and of 1821 appeared again. 
Military commissions were formed, severe measures were 
taken against the universities, foreign books were pro- 
hibited, men were condemned to the galleys for a word, 
for a thought. After a riot at Syracuse, Ferdinand II 
ordered fifty-two persons to be shot. Never were rulers 
and ministers blinder to the dangers with which an un- 
seasonable policy is attended. They did not perceive that 
by repressing the legitimate aspirations of the constitu- 
tionals they were forming republicans. Mazzini was 
replacing Pepe and Santa Kosa. 

In Eastern Europe a most formidable insurrection began. 
Poland rose as one man, set up a regular government, or- 
ganized a powerful army, made war on a great scale and 
for a time held in check all the forces of the Eussian 
Empire. Here again as in Italy, men desired political 
freedom, but national independence above all. The move- 
ment broke out on November 29, 1830. Through excess of 
prudence, after an excess of rashness, no attempt was made 
to propagate the insurrection in the Polish provinces out- 
side the eight palatinates that formed the kingdom as con- 
stituted by the Congress of Vienna. The partitioners of 
1773 were of one mind in upholding their work. While 
100,000 Eussians marched on Warsaw, 60,000 Prussians 
in the Duchy of Posen and as many Austrians in Galicia 
guarded against the revolutionary contagion the share of 
Polish spoils which had fallen to them. Moreover, the two 
governments of Vienna and Berlin agreed to intercept all 
communication of the insurgents with Europe and to unite 
their forces with those of Eussia if the revolt invaded their 
provinces. Prussia did even more. After the sanguinary 
battles of Wawre and Grochow in February, 1831, and of 
Dembe and Ostrolenka in March and May, Marshal Paske- 
vitch changed his plan of forcing Warsaw from the front 
and resolved to attack the city by the right bank of the 
Vistula. This bold and dangerous march would separate 
him from his base. Frederick William III opened to him 



A.D. 1831.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION 517 

Konigsberg and Dantzic, so that he might be able to re- 
victual his army. This was direct cooperation in the war 
and a violation of the principle of non-intervention pro- 
fessed by the western Powers. Nevertheless they raised 
no serious objection, although the Polish cause was very 
popular in France and England. In those two countries 
committees were formed which sent to Poland money, vol- 
unteers and arms. But at Paris, as at London, the gov- 
ernments were fully resolved not to intermeddle in a 
quarrel which lay outside the sphere of their military 
action. 

King Louis Philippe negotiated, so as to have the air of 
doing something. The British Cabinet, which also held 
hostile nations, like Ireland and India, in harsh depen- 
dency, declared that the rights of the Tsar were indisputable. 
Abandoned to their own resources, the Poles were doomed 
to succumb. Warsaw fell on September 8, 1831, after a 
heroic resistance. Nicholas, erasing from the treaties of 
1815 the articles which conceded to Poland an independent 
existence with national institutions, converted her territory 
into Russian provinces. The patriots were exiled and 
suspected persons were stripped of their possessions. Rus- 
sian became the official language. Roman Catholicism was 
the religion of the land. It was deprived of a number of 
churches which were bestowed upon the Orthodox Greek 
faith. While all Roman Catholic propaganda was pro- 
hibited, religious apostasy as well as political desertion was 
encouraged. Nicholas would have liked to suppress even 
the history of Poland. At all events he blotted out her 
name. In official documents Poland is now called the 
governments of the Vistula. 



518 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1832. 



XXXVIII 

THE THREE EASTERN QUESTIONS 
(1833-1848) 

Interests of the European Powers in Asia. — The Eastern 
Question is threefold rather than single or double. The 
first form is discussed on the shores of the Bosphorus, and 
the second in the centre of Asia. In both the antagonists 
are Russia and England. It is of prime necessity to the 
latter to control every route which leads to her Indian 
Empire. Therefore she desires the maintenance of those 
states in Western Asia which Russia menaces by her arms 
or her diplomacy. The third form of the Eastern Question 
concerns the eastern portions of the Asiatic continent, 
including China and Japan. It interests Russia and Great 
Britain primarily, but in less degree the United States and 
all maritime nations. Such questions require many years 
to settle. Although puzzled over so long by the world, 
they are still only in their preliminary stages. 

This portion of modern history does not present the spec- 
tacle, which we have just considered in the West, of two 
societies in the name of different ideas striving with each 
other for universal acceptance. In place of a war of two 
abstract principles, we shall behold a hand-to-hand conflict 
of mercantile interests and territorial expansion. The two 
Powers which play the principal part in these events seek 
mainly the acquisition of provinces or guineas. Moral 
considerations are constantly lost from sight. Thus British 
cannon force the Chinese government to allow the introduc- 
tion of opium from British India, so that the deficit of the 
East India Company may be made good. But man often 
accomplishes a better work than he designs. After the 
violent deeds of Lord Clive and Warren Hastings and the 
aggressive wars and cruel sentences of the Tsars, India is 
being covered with a network of railroads, and the Siberian 
waste dotted with commercial cities. Security and social 



A.D. 1832.] THE THREE EASTERN QUESTIONS 519 

life are transforming the steppes of the nomads which they 
never visited before. 

The First Eastern Question. Constantinople. — The Tsar 
Nicholas cherished vast designs. His states already cov- 
ered half of Europe and a third of Asia. But Russia had 
no outlet of the south, and her ports on the Baltic were 
frozen up a large portion of the year. Only by the Bos- 
phorus and the Dardanelles could she reach the Mediter- 
ranean, and they were closed against her. " Constantinople 
is the key of the Russian house." It dominates Greece, 
Western Asia, and the passages to the Indies by the Red 
Sea and the Persian Gulf. Between the Russians and most 
of the Christian subjects of the Sultan there was strong 
religious affinity, as both were members of the Ortho- 
dox or Greek Church. In 1829 the troops of Nicholas had 
captured Adrianople and advanced within a few leagues of 
the Golden Horn. His eyes were still fixed upon the 
"second capital of the Roman Empire." Once established 
in that impregnable position, he could have undertaken the 
project of Napoleon against the British domination in India. 

But, though Austria was in political alliance with the 
Russians, their ambitious hopes caused her great anxiety. 
Herself a half-Slav state, she dreaded to have them pene- 
trate the valley of the Danube and wave the flag of pan-Slav- 
ism before her populations of the same blood. Moreover, 
herself a maritime power, their establishment in the sea- 
ports of the Levant would ruin her commerce. But the 
Tsar could not reach Constantinople by land without a sort 
of permit of transit from the Austrians, and the English 
would bar his path by sea. By securing Galicia and Buko- 
vina as her share of Poland, Austria had occupied the upper 
valleys of the Pruth and Dniester. Hence the road which 
the Russian army must follow to the Marmora was a line 
400 miles in length, perpendicular to the military roads of 
Austria, and might be cut at a thousand points, whenever 
the Sultan should summon that power to his aid and throw 
open to its armies the valley of the Danube. Certain of 
finding the Austro-Hungarian forces on this road and the 
English in the Dardanelles, Nicholas waited for fresh com- 
plications and contented himself with imposing on the Sul- 
tan his haughty protection. 

Decline of Turkey. Power and Ambition of the Viceroy 
of Egypt. — Turkey was rapidly descending that declivity 



520 • HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1832. 

which is so difficult for a nation to reascend. In 1774 she 
had lost the Crimea and the mouth of the Dnieper; in 1772, 
the left bank of the Dniester; in 1812, Bessarabia as far as 
the Pruth ; in 1829, the mouths of the Danube and a part 
of Armenia. Thus the bulwarks of the empire had been 
falling away one after the other. Greece had won her 
freedom. Montenegro had never been subdued. The Ser- 
vians, Moldavians and Wallachians under the protection 
of Russia had formed national governments and owed only 
a small tribute to the Forte. Although the rebellion of 
Ali Pasha of Yanina had been put down, the reforms of 
Sultan Mahmoud for the time being weakened rather than 
strengthened this state because they roused the indignation 
of the faithful and of the Oulema. Thus the domination 
of the Sultan was seriously threatened in Europe. The 
four or live million Ottomans, swallowed up in the midst 
of twelve or fifteen million Christians, seemed destined to 
retain their supremacy only a short time longer. The in- 
tervention of Europe had been required to save them when 
the treaty of Adrianople was made. They maintained a 
precarious existence, partially through their ancient habit 
of command and specially by the quarrels of their subjects, 
who belonged to different races and had conflicting passions 
and interests. 

While everything was on the decline in the north of the 
empire, a new power was forming in its southern provinces. 
Mehmet Ali, a Roumelian adventurer, had taken advantage 
of the disorganization of Egypt, after the departure of the 
French, to carve a place for himself and in 1806 to grasp 
the power. He had crowned this usurpation by throwing 
into the sea an English corps which had seized Alexandria 
(1807). Then he had fortified his authority after the Ori- 
ental fashion by massacring the Mamelukes whom he had 
lured into an ambush. The fierce Wahabites, the Protes- 
tants of Islam, had captured Mecca, Medina and Damascus. 
He exterminated them in a war which lasted six years. 
Thus to Mussulman orthodoxy he restored its holy cities 
and its sanctuary, and enabled it in safety to make the 
annual pilgrimage. His conquest of Sennaar, Kordofan 
and Dongola, in the valley of the upper Nile, restored some 
pride to that empire which was wasting away everywhere 
else. After the terrible expedition of his son, Ibrahim, to 
the Morea, it was believed that he would have crushed the 



A.D. 1832.] THE THREE EASTERN QUESTIONS 521 

Greek insurrection had not the European powers interfered 
at Navarino. In consequence, in the East the viceroy of 
Egypt was encircled with a double halo as religious restorer 
and invincible conqueror. In Europe, and especially in 
France, he was considered a reformer. With the aid of 
French engineers and officers he created a merchant and a 
war-fleet, organized an army, which was drilled in Euro- 
pean style, constructed various arsenals and workshops, and 
founded schools. To render these enterprises possible, he 
had effected such a revolution as was possible only with the 
fellahs, one of the meekest peoples on earth. They had 
been trained by sixteen centuries of servitude to endure 
everything without a murmur. Not only had he as sover- 
eign declared himself sole proprietor of the soil, which in 
Mussulman countries is in full accordance with the written 
law, but he had gone still farther and appropriated to him- 
self the monopoly of agriculture and trade. Hence, as sole 
proprietor, sole producer and sole merchant in all Egypt, 
he never lacked money for an undertaking or soldiers for 
his regiments. 

Conquest of Syria by Ibrahim Pasha (1832). Treaty of 
Hunkiar Iskelessi (1883). — In all ages the masters of 
Egypt have been desirous to possess Syria and the great 
islands of the eastern Mediterranean. Thus they might 
obtain building timber, in which Egypt is absolutely lack- 
ing, and harbors to supplement Alexandria, which until the 
creation of Port Sai'd by M. De Lesseps was the only port 
in the Delta. To reward his services in Greece, Crete was 
added to the provinces of Mehmet Ali. This did not sat- 
isfy his ambition, which could only content itself by regen- 
erating or dismembering the empire. For his share he 
aimed at Syria, whose mountain fastnesses covered the 
approach to Egypt and overhung the route to India by way 
of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf. Under the pretext 
of pursuing some fellah fugitives and ending a personal 
quarrel with the pasha of Saint Jean d'Acre, his son, Ibra- 
him Pasha, in 1831 attacked that stronghold which had 
resisted General Bonaparte. He captured it and subdued 
the whole of Syria. The first army sent by the Sultan 
against him was destroyed in many encounters. A second 
Ottoman army lost the great battle of Konieh, north of the 
Taurus, in December, 1832. The road to Constantinople 
was open, and Ibrahim "was hurrying thither. Mahmoud in 



522 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1833-1840. 

terror implored the assistance of Kussia. The fleet from 
Sebastopol immediately entered the Bosphorus, where 
15,000 Russians landed while 45,000 crossed the Danube 
"to save the Sultan." France and England were in con- 
sternation at the arrival of the Russians, and persuaded 
Mahmoud and his vassal to accept the Convention of Ku- 
taiah in May, 1833, which gave over Syria to Mehmet Ali. 
The Russians withdrew, but by the treaty of Hunkiar 
Iskelessi, signed in June, 1833, an offensive and defensive 
alliance was concluded between the Tsar and the Sultan. 
A single clause, aimed at France and England, stipulated 
that the Dardanelles should be shut to all foreign war- 
ships. 

The Treaty of Adrianople had closed one act in the 
momentous drama of the Eastern Question. That of Hun- 
kiar Iskelessi closed another. After having begun the dis- 
memberment of Turkey, the Tsar placed that empire under 
his protection. Had Europe interposed no obstacle to that 
protection, it would soon have reduced the Ottoman Empire 
to a Russian dependency. 

The Treaty of London (1840) and the Treaty of the Straits 
(1841). — Six years passed, during which Sultan Mahmoud 
made every preparation to overthrow the pasha by whom 
he had been humbled. In 1839 he thought that his troops 
were sufficiently disciplined to cope with the Egyptians, 
and he confided to them the task of regaining the provinces 
which the Convention of Kutaiah had wrested from him. 
Ibrahim Pasha at the battle of Nezib again destroyed the 
Ottoman army. By that victory, for a second time the road 
to Constantinople lay open. But if he marched upon it, 
he was sure to find it defended by the Russians. The 
intervention of Europe brought the victorious Egyptian to 
a halt. 

Sultan Mahmoud died six days before the news of the 
fatal battle of Nezib reached Constantinople. He was suc- 
ceeded by his son. Sultan Abd-ul Medjid, who desired peace 
with his resistless vassal. The Kapoudan Pasha, Achmet, 
through hatred for the grand vizier, surrendered the entire 
Ottoman fleet to the viceroy of Egypt in the harbor of 
Alexandria. The Ottoman Empire, then without ships and 
soldiers, could be saved from annihilation only by the 
interference of the great Powers. 

England was haunted by the dread of a Russian army in 



A.D. 1840-1841.] THE THREE EASTERN QUESTIONS 523 

Constantinople. Nor was she willing that Egypt, which 
lay upon one route to India and in which French influence 
was then paramount, should become too strong. Austria 
and Prussia followed in her wake. Russia, who was not 
then ready to act alone, preferred to have the feeble Otto- 
mans at Constantinople rather than the energetic and suc- 
cessful viceroy. France only was warmly on his side. 

On July 15, 1840, Great Britain, Eussia, Prussia and 
Austria signed the Treaty of London. It specified that 
Mehmet Ali should enjoy the hereditary possession of Egypt 
and should retain Saint Jean d'Acre during his life, but 
that within the space of ten daj^s he should evacuate all his 
other provinces and restore them to Turkey. The four 
Powers charged themselves with the execution of these 
terms and also agreed to depose Mehmet Ali in case of his 
resistance. 

The viceroy refused to submit. Thereupon an English 
squadron bombarded Beyrout, burned the Egyptian fleet, 
and almost destroyed Saint Jean d'Acre, the base of Egyp- 
tian supplies. The contest was too unequal. Mehmet Ali 
yielded, being guaranteed the possession of Egypt. 

France had not even been invited to the congress which 
drew up the Treaty of London. The tortuous and ignoble 
policy of Louis Philippe which, while sacrificing much to 
retain alliance with England, was making overtures to the 
absolutist Powers, had gained France only isolation and 
humiliation. The tidings that she had been utterly ignored, 
while the other states decided the question of the hour, 
caused intense indignation throughout the country. The 
timorous government seemed at first to sympathize with 
the explosion of national sentiment. It commenced forti- 
fying the strongholds, increasing the army and throwing up 
extensive works around the city of Paris. It seemed threat- 
ening to draw the sword, which, however, it did not draw. 

The king became alarmed. He abandoned the ministry, 
which he had followed at first. M. Thiers yielded his place 
to M. Guizot, and the new head of the Cabinet made haste 
to offer his hand to the Powers from whom his country had 
just received an insult. On July 13, 1841, he signed the 
Convention of the Straits. This was a double success for 
Lord Palmerston. He could point at the humble return of 
France to "the European concert" and at Eussia under 
compulsion renouncing the secret clause of the treaty of 



524 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1796-1859. 

Hunkiar Iskelessi, for the new treaty closed both the 
straits to ships of war. So this third act in the drama, 
acted around Constantinople, terminated to the advantage 
of England. 

The Second Eastern Question. Central Asia. — The Eng- 
lish had taken possession of India, and the Russians of 
Siberia. Between them there intervened the whole breadth 
of China, Turkestan, Persia and Afghanistan. The two 
nations might well imagine that their frontiers would never 
touch. But during half a century they were drawing ever 
nearer. To-day they stand almost face to face. To-morrow 
they may be engaged in a hand-to-hand death struggle. 

Progress of the Russians in Asia. — The king of Georgia, 
a country on the southern slope of the Caucasus, in 1796 
implored and obtained the assistance of Catherine II 
against the Persians. For the purpose of affording him 
better protection the .Russians took possession of Derbent 
on the Caspian, of Daghestan, and of nearly the whole 
country as far as the Koura. Gradually the entire kingdom 
became a Russian province. Later on they seized from the 
Ottomans the mouth of the Faz (1809), and from the Per- 
sians Shirvan (1813), and Armenia south of the Koura as 
far as its tributary, the Aras (1828). They had reached 
Mount Ararat. The central barrier of the Caucasus was 
not yet crossed, but it was flanked, and some day was sure 
to fall. This occupation of the trans-Caucasian isthmus 
gave moreover to the Russians an excellent base of opera- 
tions, either to attack Turkey from the rear and threaten 
Persia, or to control the Caspian and the Euxine. The 
Koura emptied into the one sea, and the Faz into the other. 
The lawless Circassian mountaineers were still unsubdued. 
A line of fortified posts was drawn year by year more 
closely around them, and by degrees forced them back into 
the wild gorges and upon the desolate mountain tops. 
Nevertheless Schamyl, their hero and prophet, maintained 
the "holy war" for twenty-five years and wore out succes- 
sive Russian armies. In 1859 he was surrounded and capt- 
ured. With him fell the independence of those restless 
tribes. South of the Caucasus the Tsar then possessed 
eight provinces, buttressed by the mountains which were 
occupied by his troops and covered on their flanks by strong 
fortresses and two great seas. United in one great military 
government, of which Tiflis is the centre, these provinces 



A.D. 1816-1826.] THE THREE EASTERN QUESTIONS 525 

form an impregnable advanced post for the Russian Empire. 
Thence her armies can take, on the right, the road to Scu- 
tari, whose heights command Stamboul, or, on the left, the 
road to Teheran, the capital of Persia. The merchant 
marine of Odessa and Taganrog, protected by the fleet of 
Sebastopol, the new military post, commanded the Black 
Sea. The Caspian became a Russian lake, for an article of 
the treaty of Tourmantchai stipulated that the Russians 
should have full liberty to navigate its waters and that no 
other nation should maintain armed vessels thereon. Thus 
steamer-landings, even in Persian waters, might be con- 
verted into small forts and mark out the track of future 
expeditions, either toward the south shore, not far distant 
from which rises the capital of Persia, or toward the east- 
ern shore in the direction of Khiva and Turkestan. At 
the same time, Russia was advancing toward the latter 
countries over the immense steppes of the Kirghiz Kazaks. 
Stationing a war flotilla on the Sea of Aral and staking out 
the desert with fortresses, they would be able some day to 
reach the fertile repjions of ancient Bactriana. 

Progress of the English in Asia. — While Europe was oc- 
cupied against republican and imperial France with wars, 
which England subsidized, England was completing the 
subjection to herself of the 200,000,000 inhabitants of 
India. In 1816 Nepaul, in the north of Hindustan, and 
two years later, the valiant Mahratta tribes in the Deccan, 
were forced to submit to British control. Each prince 
received at his court a resident or officer of the Company 
who exercised supervision. At each capital, to hold the 
native sovereign in submission, an English garrison was 
stationed, the pay of which was guaranteed from the reve- 
nues of one district in the state. Thus, without any cost 
to themselves, the English provided themselves with a 
numerous army, which ruled the Deccan and the valley of 
the Ganges. In 1824-1826 they made their way into 
India beyond the Ganges, wrested 200 leagues of sea-coast 
from the people of Burmah, rendered the kingdom of 
Assam tributary and seized Singapore and Malacca. Thus 
the Bay of Bengal was converted into an English sea and 
the great commercial highway to Indo-China was com- 
manded. In that quarter they were thinking only of their 
commercial interests. On the northwest they had to take 
measures for their security. 



526 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES \_x.t). 1828-1838. 

Underhand Conflict between the English and the Russians 
in Central Asia. — After the treaty of Tourmantchai (1828), 
the Russian influence was predominant at Teheran. When 
the populace of that city, angry at the harsh conditions of 
peace, massacred the E-ussian ambassador, his family and 
all the members of his household, the king of kings hastily 
sent his grandson to St. Petersburg to make the amplest 
reparation. The Tsar was merciful. But Feth Ali, the 
founder of the Khadjar dynasty, who since 1797 had bravely 
resisted his formidable neighbor, was forced to realize that 
the glorious days of Nadir Shah, when Ottomans, Mongols 
and Russians retreated before the Persian armies, were 
passed and would probably never return. 

The two great cities of Herat and Caboul command the 
communications between Persia and India. The check of 
General Bonaparte at Saint Jean d'Acre prevented his 
undertaking a march to the East. After Tilsit, Napoleon 
proposed to the Tsar Alexander that they should unite in 
that grand enterprise. For years one of his secret agents 
traversed Mesopotamia and Persia to prepare the way. 
Nicholas inherited the plan and at first assigned the chief 
part in its execution to the Shah, who had become his vas- 
sal. Herat was in the hands of an Afghan prince. He 
urged the shah to attack him. A first attempt in 1833 
failed. A second in 1837 succeeded no better. A third 
was made the following year. The operations of the siege 
were conducted by Russian officers. Great Britain watched 
these movements with a jealous eye. Russian spies were 
supposed to be travelling over India. Greek and Armenian 
merchants, settled in Calcutta or Bombay, were suspected 
of furnishing the court of St. Petersburg with information 
concerning the army, the finances and all the affairs of the 
East India Company. The natives themselves were affected 
by rumors, shrewdly put in circulation, concerning the 
decline of the power of England and the grandeur of the 
Muscovite Empire. "You cannot imagine," wrote a gov- 
ernor-general a few years later to the queen's ministers, 
" what an idea the peoples of India have of the strength of 
Russia." The Tsar Nicholas hardly made a secret of 
his purpose some future day to haul down the English flag 
in India. One of his official organs declared before the 
Crimean War that, " If an attempt were made to place ob- 
stacles in his way in Europe, he would go to Calcutta and 



A.D. 1838-1843.] THE THREE EASTERN QUESTIONS 527 

there dictate the terms of peace." Herat was one of the 
stages of the Russian army on its way to the valley of 
the Ganges, and consequently it Avas an advanced post of the 
Company. The two rivals met under its walls. Before 
the Persian troops had arrived in sight of the city, the 
English were inside to direct the defence. Also a squadron 
had sailed up the Persian Gulf and was making a demon- 
stration against the southern provinces of Persia. The 
Shah was obliged to call back his forces (1838). This was 
a check to the Tsar. The following year he tried to indem- 
nify himself by an expedition against Khiva, which his own 
generals conducted. This city lies on the second highway 
to India which passes by the Amou Daria and Bokhara. 
Frightful deserts separate Khiva from the Caspian, and the 
Russian army corps perished almost to a man. 

Before the failure of this expedition, the English had 
decided to forestall the Russians, or at least to occupy on 
the other side of the Indus the lofty chain of the Afghan 
Mountains. By so doing an impregnable bulwark would 
defend their Indian empire on the west. Early in 1839 
the army of Bengal crossed the river, marched through the 
Bolan Pass, and took possession of Candahar, the fortress 
of Ghazni, and Caboul. It placed on the throne Shah 
Soujah, who had been deposed and banished thirty years 
before. The valiant native tribes, though disconcerted for 
a time, speedily recovered their courage. When the gov- 
ernor-general tried to curtail the subsidies, at first fur- 
nished the chiefs, a general insurrection broke out. Fif- 
teen thousand English soldiers, hemmed in on all sides, 
perished. Only one man. Dr. Brydon, survived to recross 
the Indus and tell the story (1842). The East India Com- 
pany could not rest under the blow of so terrible a disaster. 
A fresh army entered the country, devastated it frightfully, 
and then marched away. That catastrophe was a warning 
to the English not to spread outside of their peninsula, but 
rather to fortify themselves in it and allow no independent 
state to exist there which might serve as the rallying point 
of a revolt or of an invasion. In 1843, by the submission 
of the emirs of Scinde and Beloochistan, they became mas- 
ters of the mouth of the Indus. On the upper course of 
that stream they established the system of residents. 
Thus was indicated the speedy annexation of the Punjaub 
or Country of the Five Rivers, a vast region inhabited by 



528 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1848-1860. 

the warlike Sikhs. Six years hiter the Punjaub was united 
to the other domains of the Company. The famous valley 
of Cashmere shared the fate of the kingdom of Lahore on 
which it depended. This was also one of the gates of India. 
Not far distant, on the right bank of the Scinde, rises the 
chain of the Bolan Mountains, whence flows the Amou Daria, 
which empties into the Russian waters of the Sea of Aral. 
The English wished to close this gate. Thus before 1848 
they had a firm hold of the whole course of the Indus. 
They were trying to submit Afghanistan to their influence, 
having failed to place it under their control. Meanwhile 
they were pushing toward the Pamir plateau, the ancient 
cradle of the European races and the point where the 
principal mountain ranges of Asia converge. 

The Third Eastern Question. The Pacific Ocean. — The 
Pacific Ocean, formerly an untravelled sea, is now the 
meeting-place of all the navies of the world. Upon its 
shores dwell ancient and industrious nations, which even 
in our time have closed their gates with jealous care against 
foreigners, and youthful colonies of Europeans or Americans 
which have rapidly become flourishing. Toward the north- 
west are 400,000,000 Chinese producers and purchasers and 
40,000,000 more active Japanese. Toward the southwest 
are the English colonies of Australia, importing goods 
the value of which is reckoned by hundreds of millions. 
The Moluccas or Spice Islands lie between. At the south- 
east of the Asiatic continent is Cochin-China, where 
France planted her flag in 1860. Still farther west are 
the 300,000,000 Hindus, among whom civilization creates 
wants and from whom it demands products. On the 
eastern shores of the Pacific stretch the Spanish Ameri- 
can republics and the United States. Railways, traversing 
the whole American continent, connect New York, the 
great port of arrival for European goods, with San Fran- 
cisco. From the latter port steamers sail regularly for 
Chinese and Japanese waters, where other steamers arrive 
twice a month from Marseilles and Southampton. There- 
fore the Pacific Ocean, upon which open the great markets 
of the world, has in our day acquired a commercial impor- 
tance like that of the Mediterranean in ancient and medi- 
aeval times. An economical revolution has been here 
accomplished, almost as great as that which followed the 
discoveries of Columbus and far more rapid, being the crea- 
tion of hardly a century. 



A.D. 1581-1840.] THE THREE EASTERN QUESTIONS 529 

Isolation of China and Japan. — For a long time foreigners 
knocked at the doors of China. Koman Catholic mission- 
aries went there to evangelize ,the people as early as 1581. 
The Portuguese had preceded them and were followed by 
the Dutch, and then by France and England. The Jesuits 
succeeded in obtaining due admission at Pekin under the 
name of literati, and a Russian religious mission was also 
established. Foreign merchants could only obtain permis- 
sion to open trading-houses outside the walls of Canton. 
Such a station Russia had at Kiakhta, where Siberian furs 
were exchanged for Chinese tea and silk. In vain did 
England (1793-1806) and Russia (1805) send solemn 
embassies. The Son of Heaven required the ambassadors 
to undergo a humiliating ceremony as condition of their 
reception. Some refused. Others reached Pekin only as 
prisoners. All returned without the commercial treaty 
which they had been commissioned to obtain. Said the 
eyewitness of one of the least unsuccessful of these embas- 
sies, " We entered Pekin as beggars. We remained there 
as captives. We departed as condemned criminals." The 
situation became even worse. In 1828 the Roman Catholic 
missionaries were expelled, despite the religious toleration 
professed by the government. China remained walled in. 
Japan, no less tightly closed, tolerated the presence of the 
Dutch in the harbor of Nagasaki only on condition of their 
confining themselves to an island in the roadstead, and per- 
mitted no other nation to approach its coast. 

Opium War (1840-1843). — All the nations, barbarous or 
civilized, have created for themselves artificial wants and 
indulgences. Some chew the betel nut, others smoke to- 
bacco, and the Chinese intoxicate themselves with opium, 
notwithstanding the injurious effects upon the human sys- 
tem. The English found this vice to their financial advan- 
tage. They covered Bengal with fields of poppies and, when 
the Chinese government strictly prohibited the introduction 
of opium, organized a vast contraband trade. The Middle 
Kingdom continued to be inundated with the fatal drug, 
from which the English made a yearly profit of several 
million dollars. In 1839 the imperial commissioner ordered 
20,000 chests of opium, worth about $18,000,000, to be 
seized and thrown into the sea. This seizure was legal, and 
no just claim could be entered against it. But several acts 
of violence, committed against Englishmen, were grasped 
2m 



530 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1842-1848. 

at as a pretext. An expedition sent to Chinese waters 
occupied the island of Chusan and destroyed the forts which 
commanded the entrance to the river of Canton. The first 
convention not being ratified, the English made two cam- 
paigns to dictate peace under the walls of Nankin. By the 
treaty of August, 1842, China opened five ports to foreign 
commerce, ceded Hong Kong to Great Britain, and promised 
an indemnity of nearly $21,000,000. The two govern- 
ments in their official declarations continued to treat the 
opium traffic as illicit. Nevertheless smuggling was made 
easy by the opening of the five ports. During the following 
year 40,000 chests were introduced. This meant a profit 
of many millions to the landed proprietors of Bengal. 

The Russians meanwhile had been careful not to dis- 
please the court of Pekin. The Tsar Nicholas had severely 
prohibited the introduction of opium into China through 
the Russian frontiers. 

" France tried to obtain a share in the trade of those re- 
gions. In 1844 she sent to China an embassy which signed 
a commercial treaty and caused the edicts against the Chris- 
tians to be revoked. Confiscated churches were to be re- 
stored and the Roman Catholic missionaries were to enjoy 
freedom in disseminating their faith wherever they would. 
Such stipulations were honorable to France. Not only the 
danger but the distance was relatively greater than in these 
days of rapid communication. The French government 
assumed a heavy responsibility in declaring itself the offi- 
cial protector of Catholic missions among the Chinese. 

Summary. State of the Three Eastern Questions in 1848. 
— In the extreme East the two chief antagonists are hardly 
aware of each other's presence. There the question is 
hardly more than at the beginning of its initial stage. In 
Central Asia both Powers have received disastrous checks 
at the hands of the fierce natives, and neither has fully re- 
trieved its damaged ]3restige. The English are fortifying 
themselves behind the mountains and show no present in- 
tention of issuing westward through the Bolan or Khaiber 
Pass. Russia has not yet resumed her march toward 
Khiva. At Constantinople they are indeed face to face, 
but there the contest is diplomatic. It is waged by bring- 
ing to bear pressure upon the Porte, by successive and 
short-lived treaties, and by the search for allies among the 
other European states. Neither in China, Central Asia, 



A.D. 1848.] THE THREE EASTERN QUESTIONS 531 

nor the Ottoman Empire have the two rivals met in arms. 
Nor are they so keenly conscious of their rivalry as they 
are to become in the succeeding fifty years. Xot yet, not 
even at Constantinople, does any one of the Three Questions 
reveal all of its ultimate immense importance. 



532 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1840, 



XXXIX 

ANTECEDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 

Character of the Period comprised between 1840 and 1848. 
Progress of Socialistic Ideas. — The treaty of the Straits 
marks a sort of halting-point for Europe. During several 
subsequent years we see hardly any risings or insurrections. 
The Powers talk of peace, and order reigns in nearly every 
state. In England the Tories return to power (1841). 
Prince Metternich continues his " paternal " rule in Austria. 
The Tsar Nicholas devotes his energies to organizing Kus- 
sia like an immense barrack, whence can issue against 
Europe or Asia armies which he believes invincible. Nar- 
vaez recasts for Spain a constitution more monarchical 
than that of 1837. 

France, which nearly every year since 1830 had beheld 
a new Cabinet, no longer has any ministerial changes. 
M. Guizot, the prime minister, or President of the Council, 
builds up a conservative party which, convinced that every- 
thing is for the best in a social order where it monopolizes 
the power and honors, believes there is nothing which 
needs change. A sort of temporary calm is the result. 
The political agitations of the preceding ten years are fol- 
lowed by the fruitful labors of Jiianufactures and commerce. 
From one end of Europe to the other nothing is to be heard 
but the sound of railways in process of construction and 
of factories which spring up and work with feverish ardor. 
Financial institutions of all sorts are multiplied. Wealth 
is accumulated and the Exchange regulates business trans- 
actions. 

And yet this society with its material interests so pros- 
perous is approaching an abyss, because its leaders in their 
turn believe in the immobility of the world and forget to 
ask whether there are not other needs which must be sat- 
isfied. While official society was content with the tran- 
quillity which reigned in the street and the activity which 
showed itself in business, the two already old ideas of na- 



I 



A.D. 1843-1845.] ANTECEDENTS OF 1848 533 

tional and individual independence were making converts. 
A new idea had risen at their side in the realization that 
the lot of the laboring classes must be improved. 

In Poland and Italy the Russian and the Austrian were 
still odious. In Bohemia and Hungary the new study of 
national history and literature revived memories of au- 
tonomy which had seemed to be long effaced. Germany 
dreamed of her unity and of the fatherland. Some of her 
princes talked about it, for the sake of rendering themselves 
popular. To this idea the king of Bavaria erected a Wal- 
hallaj a Pantheon of all German glories. At Berlin the 
head of the Hohenzollern lauded "the German country." 

After the nationalists came the liberals, some of whom 
asked for the liberties which had been promised and others 
claimed the enlargement of liberties already obtained. The 
inhabitants of the Romagna demanded from the papal gov- 
ernment, sometimes with threats as in 1843, a regular ad- 
ministration with a code of laws. Each year the Rhenish 
provinces expressed a strong desire for a constitution. Even 
in the Prussian provinces of the Vistula and the Oder lib- 
eral tendencies were displayed which caused uneasiness at 
Berlin. Turin printed a journal whose very title was sig- 
nificant, II Risorgimento or the " Resurrection " ; and Count 
Balbo published his Speranze d'ltalie (1843). The ambi- 
tions of the French opposition party were equally modest 
and even more legitimate. 

But in the darkness a still more formidable faction was 
forming, which twice already has flooded Paris with blood, 
made illustrious victims, laid palaces in ashes, and which 
will, perhaps, long continue to be the terror of Europe, 
unless wisdom and energy provide a remedy. 

The Revolution of 1789, accomplished by and for the 
burgher class, seemed complete wherever royal despotism 
and the privileges of birth had disappeared. This double 
conquest, equality in the eye of the law and the free dis- 
cussion of national interests, satisfied the ambition of the 
middle class, every man of which was accustomed to be the 
architect of his own fortune and asked nothing of the state 
except assurance of public order without interference in 
private affairs. 

The application of steam to manual trades and the ' in- 
vention of hand-machines, which were first seen in France 
at the Exposition of 1845, led to a revolution in the mode 



534 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1840-1848. 

of manufacture and in the very constitution of labor. Small 
workshops disappeared and gave way to immense factories, 
to which the railways brought the inhabitants of the coun- 
try districts in crowds. In a few years the capitals and 
the manufacturing or mercantile cities of both hemispheres 
doubled the number of their inhabitants. In the bosom of 
these formidable agglomerations of humanity industry was 
carried to a high degree by the powerful means placed at 
its disposal, and created great wealth and also great 
wretchedness. 

In order to compete, it was necessary to produce much 
and to produce cheaply. In other words, longer days were 
required of the workman, but the wages were so diminished 
as to prevent provision against sickness or cessation of 
work. Hence arose hardships which the Utopians, some 
of whom were generous souls, proposed to suppress by 
causing indigence to disappear, as the two great miseries of 
times past, domestic slavery and serfdom, had disappeared. 
But instead of proceeding gradually, they undertook to 
change everything at a stroke. Their panacea might cause 
a thousand evils without even healing one, because their 
remedies ran counter to the very nature of man and of 
society. A convent can exist with community of goods or 
a religious or charitable association depend upon the devo- 
tion of each member to the good of all. But under such 
conditions no regular society is constituted. The Phalan- 
steries and the Icaria, attempted in France, Belgium, Bra- 
zil and Texas, came to a miserable end. But the ignorant 
populace were not deaf to formulas like the following: 
"Property is robbery," "Everyman has a right to work, 
even when there is no work to be done, or money where- 
with to pay for it," " Wages shall be equal, however unequal 
the product," "The individual must disappear in a vast 
solidarity wherein each man will receive according to his 
needs and will give according to his ability." 

These socialistic reveries, which are absolutely opposed 
to individual liberty, the most imperious need of our days, 
were destined to be put into political action through the 
alliance of certain republicans with the new sectaries. 
The latter, to give realization to their dreams, desired to 
mate the state interfere in everything. But as the gov- 
ernment was in the hands of the burghers, the first essen- 
tial was to take it away from them. The masses trouble 



A.D. 1840-1848.] ANTECEDENTS OF 1848 535 

themselves little about political questions which they do 
not understand. But, listening eagerly to those who prom- 
ised them prosperity, they were ready to follow on being 
told that " social liquidation " could be attained only with a 
government of their own choice. Thus socialism, born 
under the Restoration amid apparently harmless humani- 
tarian Utopias, gave existence to a numerous party which 
included all the poor, and which the logicians of '48 
strengthened by decreeing universal suffrage. 

This movement was not peculiar to France alone. As 
early as 1817 England had had the Chartists, in 1836 the 
Workingmen's Association, and three years later disturb- 
ances in Wales. In 1844 a central association for the 
welfare of workingmen was formed in Prussia, and grave 
troubles agitated Silesia and Bohemia. This was the 
beginning of that war between wages and capital, between 
the workingman and the employer, which was to break out 
with violence. 

Of this subterranean ferment official society, as is often 
the case, saw nothing. At least it troubled itself little 
about an evil from which the classes, accustomed for many 
centuries to suffering, were now suffering. Up to the eve 
of February 24, 1848, it was occupied with entirely differ- 
ent issues, yet a few months later it found itself obliged to 
wage a four days' battle with 100,000 men from the poorer 
classes. 

France from 1840 to 1846. — The history of France during 
these years lies far more in the obscure facts just mentioned 
than in those stirring events of the time which a quarter 
of a century had sufficed to restore to their true proportions. 
This was a golden age of orators. Much eloquence was ex- 
pended and only small things were done. A friend of the 
government summed up in 1847 this policy of mere words. 
"What have you done with your power?" he asked the 
ministers. "Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!" 

The national feeling had been profoundly wounded by 
the events of 1840. M. Guizot as a compensation to French 
pride caused the sterile rocks of the Marquesas Islands in 
the Pacific Ocean to be occupied (May, 1842). New Zealand 
was more valuable. France was on the point of seizing it 
when England took possession of it first. A French officer 
planted the flag of France upon the great oceanic island of 
New Caledonia. The ministry had it torn down. The 



536 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1840-1846. 

states of Honduras and Nicaragua asked for the protection 
of France. Hayti wished to do the same. This protection 
was refused and the refusal was apparently inspired by Eng- 
land. Though France acquired the Society Islands, her 
commercial interests in those regions were not great enough 
to necessitate an imposing establishment. Tlie acquisition 
of Mayotte (1843) was a wiser operation, because that islet 
provided French ships a better haven than the island of 
Bourbon could afford them and a naval station in the vicinity 
of Madagascar. At Tahiti an Englishman named Pritchard, 
at once consul, missionary and apothecary, stirred up the 
natives against France. The unworthy agent was driven 
from the island (1844). His complaints were listened to in 
Parliament, and the French Cabinet demanded from the 
Chambers an indemnity for the intriguer who had caused 
the shedding of blood. The official disavowal of Rear- 
Admiral Dupetit Thouars, who had tried to extend the 
French establishment in Oceanica, increased the public 
irritation. This disavowal was regarded as a humiliation 
before the British government. A more serious conces- 
sion, made to the English, was the recognition of England's 
right of search for the suppression of the slave trade. This 
time the opposition was so vigorous throughout the land 
that the Chamber forced the minister to repudiate the 
treaty and to place the French merchant marine by fresh 
conventions once more under the exclusive protection of 
the national flag (May, 1845). 

The Chamber and public opinion desired the conquest of 
Algeria to be completed. The ministry had the merit of 
choosing an energetic and skilful man, General Bugeaud, 
who was able to inspire the Arabs with both respect and 
terror. Abd-el Kader was preaching a holy war and by 
the rapidity of his movements had spread terror through 
the province of Oran and even to the gates of Algiers. The 
emir was defeated and his family and flocks were captured. 
Taking refuge in Morocco he prevailed on the emperor of 
that country to join his cause. In reply France bombarded 
Tangiers and Mogador and gained the victory of Isly. The 
emperor was glad to sign a treaty of peace on easy con- 
ditions. France was rich enough, said her minister, to 
pay for her glory. 

The Anglo-French alliance was of no direct advantage to 
France, but was supposed to assure the general tranquillity. 



A.D. ia40-1846.] ANTECEDENTS OF 1848 537 

Louis Philippe sought above all the welfare of his family. 
Marrying his son, the Duke of Montpensier, to the sister 
of the Spanish queen, he aroused the resentment of the Brit- 
ish, who considered that the king was seeking to render 
France and his dynasty preponderant in the peninsula. 
Alarmed at the alienation of England and the general isola- 
tion of France, the ministry made advances to Austria, and 
in order to win her favor sacrificed Switzerland and Italy. 
Sv/itzerland wished to remodel her constitution and give 
more authority to the central power. Such a change would 
have benefited France, whose frontier would be better pro- 
tected by a strong than by a divided Switzerland. But this 
reform, urged by the liberals, was opposed by the seven 
Roman Catholic cantons. M. Guizot went so far as to ac- 
cept the diplomatic intervention of the foreign Powers, 
although that might be followed b}^ military intervention. 
However, the Separatists or Sonderbund, whom he favored, 
were defeated in a nineteen days' campaign, and the Jesuits 
were expelled (]S'ovember, 1847). 

On the banks of the Po the Austrians had occupied 
Ferrara. Pope Pius IX, who was then arousing Italy from 
her torpor, protested and was not supported. At Milan 
the Austrian garrison committed outrages in February, 
1848. M. Guizot contented himself with negotiations in 
favor of the victims. Thus France became the ally of an 
empire which maintained itself only by causing the various 
peoples which it held in servitude to oppress each other. 
When the opposition complained, the minister replied by 
pointing to the national prosperity. Popular instruction 
was developing, the penal code had been modified and 
lotteries suppressed. The law of appropriation for public 
purposes rendered it possible to carry on works of public 
utility without hindrance from private interests. Indus- 
try sprang into life and vigor, commerce extended its do- 
main, the sea-coasts were lined with lighthouses, the public 
roads were improved, and the construction of a vast net- 
work of railways was decided upon. This prosperity, as 
often happens, gave rise to frantic speculation. The evil 
was of wide scope. One of the king's ministers was con 
demned for having sold his signature, and a peer of France 
for having bought it. 

The elections of 1846 were carefully manipulated by the 
administration and gave it a majority. But among the 



538 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1841-1849. 

deputies chosen were many officials. It became evident 
that in the very small class of electors, who numbered only 
220,000, political feeling hardly existed and that calculation 
was taking the place of patriotism. Electors sold their 
votes to deputies. The persons elected sold their support 
to the ministers. Thus the representative system was 
vitiated at its source. Hence a ministry, rejected by public 
opinion, was retained in power by an artificial majority. 
The President of the Council thought himself strong because 
he counted upon a Chamber made up according to his will. 
So he assumed a lofty tone with the parliamentar}'- oppo- 
sition, the only antagonists whom he consented to notice. 
He had said at the time of the elections : " All platforms 
will promise progress ; the conservative platform alone will 
give it." Meanwhile he granted no concessions under the 
pretext that one must not allow anything to be extorted 
from him. 

England. Free Trade. The Income Tax and the New 
Colonial System (1841-1849). — Such resistance was very 
impolitic at a moment when liberal ideas, though repressed 
by the governments, were everywhere springing up again. 
The leader of the Tories, Sir Robert Peel, had kept his 
ministry in office from 1841 to 1846 only by becoming more 
of a reformer than the Whigs. Snatching from his adver- 
saries their own weapons, the ideas of Huskisson and Can- 
ning, he abolished the corn laws, favored free trade, and 
reestablished the income tax. In this manner he destroyed 
what had been looked upon as the corner-stone of aristo- 
cratic power. He abolished the Navigation Act, which 
had served to establish the maritime greatness of his coun- 
try, but which had already become a piece of warlike 
machinery fit only for a place among other antiquated 
machines. Lastly, he made the rich pay in order that the 
poor might live cheaply. 

Centuries had been required for the parliamentary insti- 
tutions of Great Britain to react upon other governments. 
But only a short time was necessary for Sir Robert Peel's 
economical revolution to issue from the island where it had 
its birth. Enacted in the name of the principles of free 
trade and applied to the greatest market of the world, it 
possessed a character of universal expansion. This great 
act, which presented such a contrast to the trivial anxieties 
of France, was destined accordingly to exercise a great in- 



A.P. 18il-1849.] ANTECEDENTS OF 1848 639 

fluence over the custom-house legislation of the continent. 
But things are bound together. The triumph of liberty in 
the realm of economics necessarily paves the way for its 
victory in the realm of politics. 

Already, under the control of these ideas, England had 
renounced the colonial system which modern Europe had 
inherited from ancient Rome and which some states still 
retain. She no longer sought the absolute domination of 
the mother country over her colonies that they, like docile 
slaves, might exist only for her, and toil, produce and 
purchase for her profit. That outworn system had cost 
North America to the English ; South America to the Span- 
ish and the Portuguese ; and Canada and Louisiana to the 
French. To the new system England was led moreover 
by her own genius. Reserving to the mother country only 
the appointment of a governor, the colonies were allowed 
to manage their own affairs by a legislative body elected by 
themselves. Thus was developed the prosperity of the colo- 
nists and that of the mother country. The constitutional 
liberty granted to Canada was productive of marvellous 
progress. All the English colonies, with the exception of 
India and the purely military outposts, found themselves 
endowed with this fruitful liberty in 1849. Liberty is not 
only a noble thing, but is also a useful thing. Thus Eng- 
land could abolish some of her taxes, while in the ten years 
between 1832 and 1842 her commerce nearly doubled. The 
budget of the continental states showed a deficit, while 
that of England presented a surplus. 

England does not like revolutions. Her government 
resembles a skilful pilot who always keeps an eye on the 
horizon to discern the great currents and steer the ship into 
them. So, since 1832, she escaped political storms by fol- 
lowing the impulse of the public mind. Thus between 1822 
and 1826 Huskisson's reforms were accomplished. In 1829 
came Roman Catholic emancipation. In 1832 electoral re- 
form was decreed. In 1841 the income tax was revised, 
not indeed as a war measure, but for the purpose of freeing 
from all imposts bread, beer and the raw materials which 
feed manufactures. In 1846 the corn laws were suppressed 
and free trade established. For these reasons England 
escaped bloodshed and revolution. 

Establishment of the Constitutional System in Prussia 
(1847) . — In the time of Voltaire and Montesquieu echoes 



540 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1845-1847. 

from the House of Commons rarely crossed the Channel 
and reached only a few superior men. Now, thanks to the 
press, they were heard everywhere and awoke and excited 
men's minds. In 1845 the states of Silesia, of the grand 
duchy of Posen and of royal Prussia demanded freedom 
of the press, publicity of debate and a penal code in accord- 
ance with the principles of modern legislation. The king 
refused everything. To those who asked for a constitution, 
he replied that he would never allow a sheet of paper to 
interpose between his people and himself. Two years later 
he was obliged to convoke a general Diet, although he was 
willing to recognize in it solely a consultative character. 
But the Diet claimed the right of receiving the annual ac- 
count of the administration of the public debt and of delib- 
erating upon all general laws, including taxation. At once 
it arrogated to itself the superintendence of the finances 
with legislative power. To guarantee against all surprises 
it declared in advance that it would recognize in no other 
assembly or commission, even if sprung from its own ranks, 
the right of exercising its functions. Thus the constitu- 
tional system was set up in Berlin. Only two great states, 
Austria and Russia, were left to represent unyielding 
opposition to the new ideas. 

Liberal Agitations in Austria and Italy. — Nevertheless 
the general movement was invading even changeless Aus- 
tria. In Styria and Carinthia, her oldest duchies, men 
desired reforms. In Hungary a great constitutional party 
was already organized. Bohemia also was in a ferment. 
But, as the country was divided between two hostile popu- 
lations, the Germans and the Czechs, Prince Metternich 
was able to rely upon the one to resist the other. In 1847 
he deprived the state of Bohemia of the right to vote the 
taxes. 

His policy had just suffered a signal check on the west- 
ern frontier of the empire, by the prompt defeat of the 
Sonderbund which he had tried to save. The victory of the 
Swiss liberals was only one more bad example given to 
the docile subjects of the Hapsburgs and did not consti- 
tute a danger. But on the other side of the Alps a storm 
was muttering, all the more threatening because this time 
the tempest came from Rome. 

The disastrous attempt of the Bandiera brothers, sons of 
an Austrian admiral, who tried to stir up the Calabrians 



A.D. 1843-1846.] ANTECEDENTS OF 1848 541 

in 1844, and the insurrection of Rimini in 1845, undertaken 
to obtain the application of the Memorandum of the Great 
Powers in 1831, had been the last appeals to arms on the 
part of the Italians. But what the propaganda of gunshots 
did not succeed in effecting, the propaganda of ideas brought 
about among that intelligent people. Gioberti, with his 
book, Del primato . . . degli Italiani, in 1843 had won over 
a part of the clergy to the national cause. Later on he had 
tried in the Modern Jesuit to remove the Pope from the 
fatal influence of " the degenerate sons of Loyola." Father 
Ventura, a famous preacher, exclaimed: "If the Church 
does not march with the age, the nations will not halt, but 
they will march on without the Church, outside the Church, 
against the Church." What pontiff would be capable of 
comprehending that religion must be reconciled with liberty ! 
The Italians believed they had found such a Pope, a re- 
former for the universal Church and a national ruler for 
Italy, in Pius IX, elected in June, 1846. At the very 
beginning he dismissed his Swiss guard, threw open the 
prisons, recalled the exiles, subjected the clergy to taxation 
and prepared the way for reform in the civil and criminal 
laws. He instituted an assembly of notables, chosen by 
himself, but possessing only a consultative voice. He 
created a Council of State, restored municipal institutions 
to Rome, and for the first time published the budget of the 
papal states. The king of Sardinia and the Grand Duke 
of Tuscany followed his example. Italy again revived with 
the double hope of regaining her political liberty and her 
national independence. On December 5, 1846, tires were 
kindled from one end of the Apennines to the other. The 
hundredth anniversary of a defeat of the Austrians before 
Genoa was being celebrated to the cry of, "Expel the bar- 
barians ! " " Fuori i barbarl ! " England, governed after 
June, 1846, by the Whig ministry of Lord Russell, sent 
the Mediterranean fleet into Sicilian waters, and Lord 
Minto, her ambassador, travelled all over Italy urging the 
princes into constitutional paths. The opposition in the 
French Chamber cried aloud to the Pope, " Courage, Holy 
Father! Courage!" But the Cabinet of the Tuileries, 
while favorable to administrative reforms, discouraged 
political reforms, so as to keep on good terms with Austria, 
alliance with whom seemed necessary in consequence of 
the Spanish marriages. 



542 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1847-1848. 

By joining in the liberal movement Austria might have 
restrained and guided it; but that Power was still under 
the fatal influence of the party, which accused "the car- 
bonaro Masta'i" of having usurped the Holy See by intrigue, 
and which even dared to call him, " A Robespierre wearing 
the tiara." She addressed to the Pope a severe note against 
his reforms in June, 1847, fomented a conspiracy in Rome 
itself, and, contrary to all treaties, occupied the city of 
Ferrara in August. Cardinal Ferretti sent to Vienna an 
energetic protest, which was backed up by the courts of 
Turin and Florence, but of which M. Guizot expressed dis- 
approbation. "Father Ventura," said Pius IX, discour- 
aged, "France is deserting us. We are alone!" "No," 
replied the Theatine monk, "God is with us. Forward!" 

And Italy did move forward. At the end of November 
the Roman Council opened. Leopold II and Charles 
Albert effected reforms which were equivalent to the prom- 
ise of a constitution and their ministers signed with the 
Papal Cabinet an alliance " for the development of Italian 
industry and the welfare of the peoples " on November 3. 
The Duke of Modena and the king of the Two Sicilies were 
invited to adhere to the treaty. This union was a threat 
against Austria, to which she replied by the military occu- 
pation of Parma and Modena in December. The extremi- 
ties of Italy immediately caught fire. 

Three months previously an insurrection at Reggio and 
Messina and a disturbance in Naples had been severely put 
down, but promises of reform had been made. On January 
12, 1848, as these reforms had not been effected, Palermo 
took up arms to the cry of, "Long live Pius IX." On the 
16th the insurrection had mastered the whole island. On 
the 18th 10,000 men marched upon Naples demanding, as 
in 1821, a constitution. On the 28th Ferdinand II yielded; 
two weeks later a charter, modelled on the French charter 
of 1830, was promulgated at Naples, and four days after- 
wards at Florence, and on March 4 at Turin. 

The Italian peoples were quivering with excitement, 
especially in the Lombardo-Venetian territory, where exas- 
peration against the Austrian had seized even the women 
and children. On January 3 Austrian dragoons put to the 
sword groups of people in the streets of Milan. Troubles 
broke out in Pavia and Padua on February 8 ; on the 15th 
at Bergamo. On the 22d Marshal Radetzki proclaimed 



A..D. 1848.] ■ ANTECEDENTS OF 1848 543 

martial law at Milan, saying to his soldiers, " The guilty 
efforts of fanaticism and of rebellion will be shattered upon 
your courage like glass upon a rock." 

Almost at the same moment a revolution burst out at 
Paris which, seventeen days later, found its echo in Vienna. 
Nothing remained to Austria in Italy at the end of March 
except the fortresses of the quadrilateral. 

The general situation of Europe at the beginning of the 
year 1848 indicated that the critical hour had come. After 
a struggle, lasting more than a generation, between the old 
regime and liberal ideas, the latter felt themselves strong 
enough to look upon their approaching triumph as sure. 
But was that victory to be won peaceably, by intelligent 
and patriotic agreement of the government and the gov- 
erned, or was a blind resistance to arouse useless riots and 
even war, and thus open up the way for republican advent- 
ures and socialistic violence? The answer depended upon 
France. If she leaned to the side whither all civilized 
Europe was proceeding, free institutions would be peace- 
ably established. Prussia and Austria, weakened by in- 
ternal disorders, would have recoiled before France and 
England, united in one thought and at need in one action. 
The old system, like a corpse still erect though long since 
bereft of life, would have fallen to rise no more. Such was 
the grand opportunity which the French ministry then held 
in its hand, and which it threw away. 



544 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1823. 



XL 

AMERICA FROM 1815 TO 1848 

American Progress. The Monroe Doctrine. Advantages 
of Liberty. — During all this period the New World fur- 
nished little to general history. Spanish America writhed 
for a long time in periodical convulsions, the fruit of a 
double despotism under which the political education of the 
citizens was impossible. Portuguese America was slowly- 
developing her riches and her population, under the protec- 
tion of a constitutional government. Canada prospered 
through liberty. The United States, having behind them 
no past to arrest their movements or excite their violence, 
and having before them infinite space, were engaged in 
expending upon nature the forces of an exuberant youth 
without yet turning those forces against themselves, as in 
the old states of the European West. Faithful to the insti- 
tutions with which they had endowed themselves, they 
tilled the prairies, cleared the forests, and covered the 
Indians' hunting-grounds with cities to which flocked a 
population that often doubled itself in twenty years. 

Not to be disturbed in this work they had used haughty 
language toward Europe. After having recognized in 1821 
the independence of the Spanish colonies. President Mon- 
roe, in 1823, in a message to the Senate, established the 
principle which has remained the rule of the Cabinet at 
Washington in its foreign policy. "The American conti- 
nents . . . are not to be considered as subjects for colo- 
nization by European powers. . . . We should consider 
any attempt on their part to extend their system to any 
portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and 
safety. Any such interference would be regarded as the 
manifestation of an unfriendly spirit to the United States." 
This declaration was renewed in decided terms when the 
success of the French invasion of Spain aroused fear of an 
attempt at restoration in Buenos Ay res, Lima,, or Mexico. 
The Old World, separated from the New by 1500 leagues 
of sea, dared not accept the challenge. 



A.D. 1812-1848.] AMERICA FROM 1815 TO 1848 545 

Nevertheless, although since the war of 1812-1815 
against England, the United States had been at peace with 
Europe, and though the European courts received from 
Washington nothing but proposals for treaties of commerce 
or the regulation of unimportant matters, the spectacle of 
that nation waxing great day by day with the most liberal 
institutions in the world was contagious to the society of 
the Old Continent. Every year the latter sent across the 
ocean many thousands of their poor in quest of land and 
liberty. Every year, also, there returned engineers, mer- 
chants and politicians who had admired on the banks of 
the Ohio and Mississippi the power of individual energy. 
The tales which were told concerning the greatness of the 
American republic encouraged the liberal party and made 
it desire still more to limit the rights of the state and ad- 
vance the rights of the citizens. 

This young republic lacked, it is true, the elegances and 
distinction of old societies where aristocracy has left behind 
something of its refined manners, of its tastes for the arts, 
of its sentiment of honor which is a sort of personal reli- 
gion. In haste to live and to enjoy life, the Americans ad- 
vanced little beyond the useful. But the useful is one of 
the two necessities of life. The other, the ideal, was sure 
to come later on with hereditary wealth and leisure. Some 
day they would no longer be obliged to say, " Time is money." 
Some day, when their soil was placed under cultivation and 
their railways and canals were completed, they would de- 
vote time to solitary meditation, to pure art, to theoretical 
science, and in a word to all the glorious but immaterial 
pursuits which make great peoples. 

Eeading this history of Europe and of the New World 
between 1815 and 1848, it would seem as if kings and peoples 
all had but one idea during those three and thirty years ; 
as if they sought only either to destroy or to save political 
liberty, Nevertheless men's minds were occupied with 
art, poetry, science, thought, religion, and a thousand mat- 
ters besides. Manufactures and commerce were in process 
of transformation. Useful reforms were made. The gen- 
eral welfare increased. Ignorance and crime were on the 
decrease. In short, almost everywhere there was security 
for property and persons. But under absolute government 
those great and beneficent things which they enjoyed lacked 
guarantees and could possess them only under constitutional 
2n 



646 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1848. 

government. Civil liberty is indispensable for every citi- 
zen. Each individual needs it that he may live like a 
man. Political liberty, on the contrary, would be merely 
a luxury, necessary to a few but useless to the majority, if, 
like a faithful guardian of a house, it were not there for 
the purpose of giving warning when thieves approach and 
of preventing their entrance. Since its part is to assure 
the safety of our welfare, we must draw the inference that, 
the richer and happier societies are, so much the greater 
is the fruitful development of the active faculties and so 
much the more indispensable is political liberty. It is the 
only pledge that their welfare shall endure. For this rea- 
son it was, and deserved to be, the object of the great 
battle which we have sketched so rapidly. 



A.D. 1848.] REVOLUTION OF 1848 547 



XLI 

REVOLUTION OF 1848 

The victory of liberal Switzerland and of the constitu- 
tional party in Prussia, the agitation of Germany, Hun- 
gary and the Austrian duchies, the conduct of Pius IX, 
and the efforts of Italy to escape from the despotism of her 
rulers as well as from the grip of the Hapsburgs, had 
caused an immense sensation in France. In the legislative 
body the deputies of the Left Centre and of the Dynastic 
Left, led by MM. Thiers and Odilon Barrot, called upon 
the ministry to fulfil its promises. They demanded the 
modification of certain taxes, and electoral and parliamen- 
tary reform. The latter had been proposed in vain at each 
session since 1842. The ministry rejected these harmless 
demands and ridiculed the opposition for its ineffectual 
efforts to awake the country from political torpor. To this 
challenge the opposition replied by seventy banquets in the 
most important cities. These national complaints found a 
voice. They deplored the degradation of France, which no 
longer possessed its legitimate influence in Europe. They 
showed how the most legitimate reforms had been refused, 
and denounced the electoral and parliamentary corruption 
fostered by the government. Their demands were most 
moderate. They asked only the addition of 25,000 persons 
to the voters and that government officials should be refused 
membership in the Chamber. 

Paris, by instinct and tradition fond of fault-finding 
when free from fear, was entirely devoted to the opposition. 
In the recent municipal elections not a single candidate of 
the ministry had succeeded in the richest and, consequently, 
the most essentially moderate quarter. A journal founded 
by the conservatives was unable to live. Dissatisfaction 
showed itself in the very heart of that party. Many in- 
fluential members of the majority passed over to the oppo- 
sition. Prince de Joinville openly showed his disapproval 
and went to Algiers in a sort of voluntary exile with his 



548 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a. d. 1848. 

brother the Duke d'Aiimale. Several members of the min- 
istry even were disgusted with an extreme policy. M. de 
Salvandy, who had undertaken numerous and liberal re- 
forms in the Department of Public Education, retained his 
place only from the desire to defend certain proposed laws 
which he had introduced. But the President of the Council 
began the battle by causing the king in his speech at the 
opening of the session on December 20, 1848, to declare 
100 deputies enemies of the throne. 

For the space of six weeks irritating debates kept public 
opinion in an uproar. The opposition made a final demon- 
stration by appointing a bancpiet in the twelfth district. 
The republicans who had long been discouraged let things 
go on without opposition, but held themselves in readiness. 
"If the ministry authorizes the banquet," said one of their 
leaders on February 20, ''it will fall. If it prohibits it, 
there will be a revolution." The Dynastic Left made a last 
effort to forestall the explosion. On February 21 M. Odilon 
Barrot laid upon the table of the Chamber an accusation 
against the ministers. 

The latter prevented the banquet. Immediately vast 
crowds got together and here and there conflicts broke out. 
But on the evening of February 23 the opposition had 
won its case. A liberal ministry was appointed under the 
presidency of M. Thiers. But those who had so well begun 
the movement had made no preparations for arresting its 
course at the exact point which the majority of the country 
desired. Men, able to attack rather than to resist, critics 
rather than men of action, in a few hours the}^ saw the 
control of the uprising slip from their hands and pass into 
those of a party which included professional conspirators 
and veterans of barricades. The latter were men of com- 
bat. They mixed among the masses, with whom the gayly 
decked and illuminated boulevards were crowded. A shot 
was flred by an unknown person at the guardhouse of the 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The troops replied by a dis- 
charge which killed fifty innocent promenaders. At the 
sight of these dead bodies borne into the city, the people of 
the faubourgs shouted, " They are assassinating our breth- 
ren! Vengeance!" and flew to arms. The king could 
count upon the army, commanded by General Bugeaud. 
That energetic leader had already taken measures to quell 
the riot, when, during the night of the 23d, he received 



A.D. 1848.] REVOLUTION OF 1848 649 

orders from the president of the new ministry to fall back 
with his troops upon the Tuileries. Rather than obey this 
senseless order he resigned his command, and the resistance 
was paralyzed. The national guard had been tardily as- 
sembled. They believed that the whole matter would b(^ 
confined to a change of ministers, and allowed the move- 
ment to go on. Revolution followed. Soon they tried to 
arrest what their inactivity had aided, but it was too late. 
Even the Order of the National Guard, which dated from 
July 14, 1789, was morally overthrown on February 24. 
Abandoned by the burghers of Paris, Louis Philippe 
thought he was deserted by all France. At noon he abdi- 
cated, while fighting was still going on at the Palais Royal. 
He departed under the protection of several regiments with- 
out being either pursued or disturbed. 

The Duke of Orleans, whose influence over the army had 
been great, was dead. The Prince de Joinville and the 
Duke d'Aumale, who enjoyed a well-earned popularity, 
were absent. There remained in addition to the Duke de 
Montpensier, who was still too young to be known, only a 
woman and a child, the Duchess of Orleans and the Count 
of Paris. The duchess, respected for her virtues and lofty 
spirit, but a stranger and alone, had no power. While the 
populace was entering the Tuileries, she went to the Cham- 
ber with the Count of Paris. The insurgents followed her 
here and caused a provisional government to be proclaimed. 

Thus, through the incapacity of the government and the 
audacity of a faction, instead of legal accomplishment of 
requisite reforms, the monarchy was overthrown. The 
successful insurrection was to paralyze labor, waste hun- 
dreds of millions of francs and divert the country far from 
the path of peaceful progress. Two men above all others 
should have put on mourning for this useless revolution and 
for the overthrown dynasty. One of the two, the king, 
might have forestalled the insurrection by taking away its 
pretext. The other, the minister, might have crushed it 
by force, but did not dare. 




^ 












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Cojivrijjlitj JS98, bv T. y. Crowell & Co, 



CONTEMPORARY HISTORY 



y>t<c 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 IN ITS INFLUENCE 
UPON EUROPE 

Contemporary History. — The term " contemporary " may 
well be applied to the history of the world since 1848. The 
present leaders in all branches of activity were born before 
this period began. Many persons now living have watched 
the unfolding of each of its successive phases. It possesses 
a distinct character of its own. While preeminent in its 
scientific and humanitarian achievements, it has specially 
contributed to political progress, not so much in what it has 
originated as by what it has developed. More than most 
periods of like duration, it is the direct consummation of 
the years immediately preceding. It differs from them as 
the harvest differs from the seed-time. 

Its most memorable achievements in the domain of poli- 
tics have been along the lines of constitutional government 
and unification of nationality. Yet here as everywhere 
else human attainment is partial and incomplete, but these 
two contributions to the advance of humanity will be promi- 
nent as we narrate its story. Because we are so near the 
events to be described and because the sources of informa- 
tion are so many, the narration will be difficult. As con- 
temporaries of these events we are ourselves tossed by the 
billows on which we gaze. 

Outbreak at Vienna and Fall of Metternich. — The prog- 
ress of the public mind is indicated as we compare the effect 
produced in foreign countries by the successive French 
revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848. The first revolution 
was attended nowhere by any immediate popular uprising 
and apparently concerned only the kings. The second 

551 



552 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848. 

caused commotions and renewed demands for constitutions 
in some of the smaller states, but the disturbances were 
soon repressed. The third came upon Europe as an elec- 
tric shock. West of Kussia and of the Ottoman Empire 
every state was convulsed. 

Reactionary Austria, of whose policy the astute Metter- 
nich had been for almost forty years at once the incarnation 
and the champion, was among the first to feel its effects. 
The Provincial Estates of Lower Austria were only the 
phantom of a deliberative assembly without power or influ- 
ence. But they served as a rallying point to the excited 
populace of Vienna, destitute of organization or of a centre. 
The Estates were to convene on the 13th of March, seven- 
teen days after the fall of Louis Philippe. When they as- 
sembled the whole city was in an uproar. Immense crowds, 
headed by students, surrounded the hall. They demanded 
that the Estates should be their messengers to the emperor 
and should make the following demands: regular publica- 
tion of the state budget, open session of the courts, freedom 
of the press, reform in municipal administration, and a 
general parliament to which all classes should be eligible. 
The terrified Estates called the troops to their assistance. 
A hand-to-hand fight raged through the streets between the 
soldiers and the people, and many lives were lost. The 
tumult constantly increased, but the citizens could not 
reach the imbecile Emperor Ferdinand IV, who was kept 
in concealment. The battle-cry was " Down with Metter- 
nich! " The veteran statesman was forsaken by all his col- 
leagues. At last he saw that resistance was useless. On 
the following day he escaped from the capital in a laundry 
cart. The emperor was induced by his attendants to give 
a verbal grant of all that the revolutionists demanded, 
but Vienna was placed under martial law. Finally, on 
April 25, an illusory constitution was proclaimed. Three 
weeks later the emperor fled to Innsbruck. Nevertheless 
his authority seemed at no time endangered. Metternich 
fallen, the people supposed that everything was gained. 

Troubles in Bohemia. — The Bohemians had acted even 
more quickly. On March 11, at a public meeting in 
Prague, they drew up a petition, asking however little 
more than improvement in the condition of the peasants 
and a general system of public instruction. The news from 
Vienna made them bolder. The students formed an aca- 



A.D. 1848.] REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS 553 

demic legion. A few days later a second petition demanded 
reconstitution of the Bohemian crown, a Bohemian Diet, 
a Bohemian ministry, and full equality between the Slavs 
and the Germans in the kingdom. A committee was sent 
to convey these demands to Vienna, where it was well re- 
ceived; but in the constitution promulgated on April 25 all 
their claims were ignored. The irritation of the Czechs 
became more intense. A congress of all the Slavic peoples 
assembled at Prague. Its chief object was to secure recog- 
nition of the race rather than the rights of individuals. 
Against such recognition the government and all the other 
nationalities of the empire were bitterly opposed. Prague 
was captured by the imperial troops and martial law 
proclaimed. 

Revolt in Hungary. — A movement, in some respects simi- 
lar to that in Prague, was meanwhile in progress under the 
lead of Kossuth at Pressburg and Pesth. There, however, 
the desire for reforms was subordinate to the still stronger 
desire for emancipation from Austria. Its dominant motive 
was the sentiment of awakened Hungarian nationality. But 
,it in no way included antagonism to the sovereign, to whom 
on many occasions the Magyars have shown a loyalty sur- 
passing that of the Austrians. Nor did it include recog- 
nition of the just demands of the various Slavic and other 
peoples who constituted a large proportion of the popula- 
tion. In April Ferdinand IV granted whatever was asked, 
practically recognizing Hungary as an autonomous state 
with himself as its sovereign. Count Batthyany was au- 
thorized to form the first Hungarian ministry. 

These measures discontented the Slavs, especially the 
Servians and Croatians. The newly appointed Ban of 
Croatia, Jellachich, took up arms, proclaiming his opposi- 
tion to those " who want liberty only for themselves and 
who wish to monopolize for the Magyar minority the treas- 
ures acquired by the sweat of the Slavs, the Germans and 
the Roumanians." A partisan of absolute rule and appar- 
ently in secret alliance with the emperor, Jellachich 
marched upon Pesth. Batthyany resigned, but Kossuth 
was appointed to organize the national defence. His volun- 
teers defeated the Ban. The Viennese, through hatred of 
the Slavs, showed a momentary passionate sympathy for 
the Hungarians. They rose against the government on 
October 7, and begged the assistance of the Hungarians 



554 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848. 

against Jellachich, who now threatened Vienna. The new 
allies arrived too late, for the capital had been already 
stormed and the ringleaders put to death. Jellachich was 
appointed generalissimo. Now, in behalf of the emperor, 
he was about to turn his arms against the Hungarians, who 
boasted meanwhile that they were " faithful to the sovereign 
beloved by Hungary." Feeble-minded and exhausted, Fer- 
dinand gladly abdicated in favor of his nephew, Francis 
Joseph. The Magyars refused to accept this abdication and 
their excessive loyalty gave them the attitude of rebels. 

Commotions in Italy. — Piedmont was independent, but 
Austria dominated almost all the rest of Italy by her arms 
or influence. Lombardy and Venice were subject provinces. 
The Milanese rose, and on March 18 they forced Radetzki, 
the Austrian commander, to evacuate the city and retreat 
to Verona. At Venice the Austrians seemed paralyzed. 
Daniel Manin was made the chief of the provisional govern- 
ment which proclaimed the Republic of Saint Mark. The 
fire of insurrection rapidly spread. Soon only a few for- 
tresses were left on the Mincio and Adige, where Eadetzki 
was resolved to hold out to the last. Forced by the clamors, 
of his people Charles Albert, king of Piedmont, on March 
26 entered Milan to support the revolution. 

Rome and Florence were still racked by the agitations of 
the preceding year. The news of the French Revolution 
came like a wind upon smouldering embers. Pius IX was 
affrighted at the sweep of principles with Avhich by nature 
he was in sympathy. But he granted the Romans a consti- 
tution and a government by two Chambers, and called his 
sagacious counsellor, Rossi, to the ministry. The Grand 
Duke of Tuscany hesitated but seemed to incline toward 
reform. The king of Naples, Ferdinand II, endeavored to 
temporize with his subjects, though granting a constitution 
and creating a united parliament for Naples and Sicily. 
The revolutionist Pepe even persuaded him to send an 
army of 13,000 Neapolitans to the assistance of Charles 
Albert. The impetuous Sicilians rejected all overtures 
from their sovereign and declared themselves indepen- 
dent. 

Popular Demands in Prussia and other German States. 
— In Baden, Wiirtemberg, Saxony and western Germany 
repressed liberal sentiment at once fond expression. Every- 
where there were demonstrations, sometimes tumultuous 



A.D. 1848.] REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS b^5 

and often violent. In Bavaria the people forced Louis I 
to abdicate. But Berlin was the centre of agitation. There 
the fall of Metternich, the recognized exponent of the 
autocratic system, produced even more profound impression 
than in Vienna. Excited crowds filled the streets. In 
public meetings the popular grievances were incessantly 
and earnestly set forth. 

Frederick William . IV was slow in deciding whether to 
resist or to put himself at the head of the universal demon- 
stration. Finally, on March 18, a royal edict announced 
that the king would favor the introduction of constitutional 
government into every German state and the establishment 
of a parliament wherein all Germany should be represented. 
The rejoicing citizens by thousands flocked to the palace. 
Their cheers were mistaken for an attack and the troops 
discharged their guns upon the defenceless masses. At 
once the burghers all over the city flew to arms. Nor was 
the riot suppressed until more than 200 citizens had been 
slain and as many soldiers killed or wounded in consequence 
of a terrible blunder. When order was restored, the king 
by a dramatic act gained immense popularity. At the head 
of a solemn procession he rode through the streets, osten- 
tatiously wearing the gold, white and black, the colors he 
had formerly proscribed and which were the symbols of the 
German Fatherland. He furthermore announced that he 
assumed the leadership in the great work of German unifi- 
cation. Union was even dearer to the German heart than 
was liberty. But, in addition, the sovereign promised 
radical and comprehensive reforms in the whole system of 
government and administration. 

The German National Assembly. — A few days later, in 
response to a general invitation, several hundred liberals 
met at Frankfort to prepare the draft of a constitution and 
formulate measures to be submitted to the forthcoming 
National Assembly. They frittered away their strength in 
political manoeuvres and retarded rather than strengthened 
the triumph of principles they should have advanced. 
Meanwhile, everywhere throughout the German states the 
deputies were being chosen for the National Assembly. On 
May 18 they held their first session in the newly erected 
church of Saint Paul at Frankfort. That was the grandest 
and most inspiring political gathering Germany had ever 
beheld. It was composed of her most patriotic and illus- 



556 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848. 

trious sons. Now were brought together within the walls 
of a single edifice all who had most contributed to the 
common welfare, and to them was confided the task of 
national regeneration. In its promise this was the golden 
day of German history. 



THE SECOND FRENCH REPUBLIC 557 



II 

THE SECOND FRENCH REPUBLIC 

(1848-1853) 

The Provisional Government. — It was installed by the 
mob on the day of revolution, and its title to authority was 
based upon the submission with which for a time its orders 
were received. The provinces as usual acquiesced in the 
government set up at the capital. The eloquent orator, 
Lamartine, was at the head as minister of foreign affairs 
and Ledru-Eollin was minister of the interior. The latter 
was a radical. The other ministers were moderate repub- 
licans. This suddenly improvised government was without 
cohesion or plan. Yet, while ruling as a despotic oligarchy, 
it seemed ardently though vaguely desirous of doing some- 
thing noble. In order to furnish occupation to the unem- 
ployed it set up national workshops and guaranteed work 
with pay or pay without work to every citizen. Soon it 
had on its roll the names of over 120,000 men, one-half of 
the laboring population of Paris. Meanwhile it supplied 
bread to their families in proportion to the number of chil- 
dren. Private enterprise became disorganized, and those 
evils increased which the national workshops were designed 
to cure. 

Universal suffrage had been proclaimed. On April 23 
elections were held all over France for the choice of depu- 
ties to a national assembly. Ten days later the Assembly 
met. It reaffirmed the Eepublic and commended the pro- 
visional government, most of whose members it reappointed 
to office as an executive commission. The socialist leaders 
of Paris raised mobs and endeavored to seize the power, 
but their first attempt was put down by the national guard. 
The national workshops had become the greatest menace to 
the state. The Assembly ordered that all the younger men 
enrolled in them should enlist in the army or cease to 
receive pay. 



558 ' CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 18i8. 

The Barricades. — Then broke out a fearful insurrection 
at Paris. Barricades were suddenly erected all over the 
eastern part of the city and were defended with military 
precision by the rioters. In the emergency General Cavaig- 
nac, the minister of war, was appointed dictator. The 
pitched battle of the streets began June 23 and lasted four 
days. However disguised by party names, it was a conflict 
between the penniless and the moneyed classes and a menace 
to the rights of property. The insurgents held their ground 
with savage courage and were not subdued until 8000 persons 
had been slain and 12,000 taken prisoners. Among the 
victims were two deputies, seven generals, and the vener- 
able archbishop of Paris, Mouse igneur Affre. Horrified 
at the fratricidal slaughter he had climbed a barricade, where 
the fighting was hottest, and was shot down while implor- 
ing the combatants to throw away their arms. 

General Discontent. — The frightful victory left the gov- 
ernment not the less humiliated and weakened. Appre- 
hension and discontent pervaded all classes, not only at 
Paris but throughout France. The masses were sullen 
because none of the socialistic Utopias, prophesied so often 
of late, had been realized. The well-to-do classes were 
panic-stricken at the peril property had just undergone and 
at future perils in store. The state revenues diminished, 
therefore taxation increased. But commerce and manufact- 
ures were paralyzed in the absence of confidence, and it 
was more diflicult to pay. 

The Assembly hastily laid the foundations of a new con- 
stitution. It confided the executive power to a president, 
elected for three years by universal suffrage and responsi- 
ble only to the people. It confided the legislative power to 
a single chamber, elected to hold office for four years. In 
the president was vested all power of appointment in the 
various branches of administration. He was to negotiate 
treaties and exercise an indefinite control of the army, but 
he could not take command of the troops or dissolve the 
Assembly or veto a measure which he disapproved. His 
power was either too little or too great. While declared 
ineligible for a second term of office, it would not be difficult 
with the means at his disposal to regain or retain the 
presidential authority were he so disposed. 

The two chief candidates for the presidency were General 
Cavaignac and Prince Louis Napoleon. The former was a 



A.D. 1849-1851.] THE SUCOyi) FRENCH REPUBLIC 559 

consistent republican, a soldier rather than a statesman, 
and the conqueror of the barricades. But the victory, won 
in the blood of Frenchmen, rendered him unpopular even 
with his own party. The latter was the nephew and heir 
of Napoleon. All his life an exile from France, he had 
returned on the fall of Louis Philippe, but when the pro- 
visional government requested him to leave the country, he 
had complied. In June, elected to the Assembly in four 
different departments, he had resigned, though reserving 
his liberty of action. Elected in September by five depart- 
ments, he no longer withdrew, but took his seat. The 
romance of his personal history, his manifest calmness and 
self-control, and above all, the magic of the great name he 
bore, made him a formidable candidate. His electoral ad- 
dress to the nation was a model of tact and shrewdness. 
He received 5,434,226 votes, while General Cavaignac could 
secure only 1,448,107. 

Presidency of Louis Napoleon. — His first year in office 
was marked only by the expedition to Rome, the election 
of a new Assembly, and a presidential message, memorable 
for its energetic and even agressive tone. The second year 
the inevitable divergence between the chief magistrate and 
the legislative body became more marked. The Assembly 
was composed of nearly equal groups of Legitimists, Orlean- 
ists, and Republicans. The two former regarded the actual 
government as a makeshift or usurpation, which was to give 
way eventually to the coronation of the Bourbon, Henry, 
Count of Chambord, or of Louis Philippe, Count of Paris, 
grandson of the deposed king. All their energies were 
devoted to that end. 

Public opinion overwhelmingly demanded revision of 
that clause of the constitution which declared a president 
ineligible to reelection. Less than two-thirds of the Assem- 
bly voted for revision, but it could be carried only by a vote 
of three-fourths. In May a decree had been passed which 
deprived over 3,000,000 Frenchmen of the right of suffrage. 
It was a fair charge that the Assembly had destroyed uni- 
versal suffrage and, by refusing to revise the constitution, 
had denied the people the exercise of choice. The third 
year was spent in irritating discussions and political ma- 
noeuvring on both sides. On November 4, 1851, the presi- 
dent demanded the repeal of the law which restricted the 
suffrage. The Bill of /Repeal was defeated by seven votes. 



560 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1851. 

Between president and Assembly it was henceforth a ques- 
tion which should first be able to overthrow the other. 

The Coup d'Etat (December 2, 1851).— The Assembly 
was at the disadvantage of being a many-headed, many- 
minded body. Louis Napoleon could take his measures 
with the effectiveness of profound secrecy. On the evening 
of December 1 he held the customary thronged reception at 
the Palace of the Elysee. Nothing in his bearing betrayed 
preoccupation or excitement. At the usual hour he with- 
drew and closeted himself with his half-brother, De Morny, 
the minister of war, St. Arnaud, and the prefect of the 
police, De Maupas. They alone were acquainted with his 
plans and upon them depended their execution. Before 
daybreak every formidable opponent of the president had 
been arrested, the principal quarters of Paris occupied by 
guards, and despatches sent out to the 40,000 communes of 
France announcing what had been done. Innumerable 
manifestoes, everywhere attached to the walls, proclaimed 
that the president on his own responsibility had dissolved 
the Assembly, restored universal suffrage, and appealed to 
the people to express its verdict on his acts in a plebiscite 
to be held within two weeks. He proposed a new constitu- 
tion which provided for a senate, council of state, and leg- 
islative chamber, and which lengthened the presidential 
term to ten years. A glowing proclamation was also 
addressed to the army. 

A portion of the Assembly on the next day endeavored to 
hold a session, but the deputies were arrested. Disturb- 
ances broke out in various parts of the capital and in the 
provinces, but were quickly suppressed. Sixty-six radical 
deputies were exiled as well as a number of monarchists. 
But Paris, as well as France in general, received the news 
of the coup d'etat with indifference or satisfaction. 



TRIUMPH OF REACTION IN EUROPE 5G1 



III 

TRIUMPH OF REACTION IN EUROPE 

Subjugation of Hungary. — The real ruler of Austria in 
December, 1848, was Prince Schwartzenberg, the head of the 
ministry. His political principles differed little from those 
of Metternich. He proposed to tolerate no reforms save 
such as should be extorted and to reduce all other ambitions 
in the empire to complete subjection to the Austrian Ger- 
mans. Austria in its medley of races and of debris of other 
states is the most heterogeneous power in Europe. By a 
playing off of race against race and utilizing" each to over- 
throw some other, Schwartzenberg proposed to attain his 
ends. 

The Hungarians regarded the new emperor as a usurper, 
and hence must be reduced to subjection. Though fighting 
to preserve Magyar independence of Austria and to main- 
tain the concessions granted them by Ferdinand, they treated 
their subjects in their Transylvanian and Slavic provinces 
as oppressively as the Austrians had treated them. The 
Austrian general, Puchner, subdued Transylvania. Win- 
dischgratz, with the main army, invaded western Hungary 
and captured Pesth. Dissensions speedily broke out 
between the orator Kossuth, the head of the committee of 
defence, and General Gorgei, commander of the army. 
Kossuth removed Gorgei and appointed a Pole, the incapa- 
ble Dembinski, to the chief command. The Austrians 
won a series of successes, but Schwartzenberg alienated the 
Slavs, who offered to unite with their hereditary foes, but 
the Hungarians rejected their overtures. Gorgei was re- 
stored to his command and he and Bern swept the invaders 
from the country, leaving only a few fortresses in their 
hands. The Hungarian Diet declared that the house of 
Hapsburg had forfeited its rights to the throne and that 
Hungary was henceforth an independent state. Austria 
had been thoroughly defeated. The only resource left her 
was to entreat the willing intervention of the Tsar. 

Eighty thousand Russians entered from the north while 
2o 



562 GOKTEMPOBARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848-1849. 

equally overwhelming forces marched from the south and 
east. The Hungarians, though constantly defeated, fought 
heroically against hopeless odds. General Klapka made a 
magnificent defence at Komorn. The last battle was fought 
at Temesvar on August 10, 1849. Three days later Gorgei, 
to whom Kossuth had resigned the dictatorship, surrendered 
with all his forces to the Russians at Villagos. 

Exasperated by the consciousness that they had been 
rescued from defeat only by the intervention of Russia, the 
Austrian s inflicted terrible atrocities upon the vanquished. 
Bern, Kossuth and other leaders with about 5000 Hunga- 
rians escaped to Turkey, where they found generous protec- 
tion. The Sultan, although threatened with war by Russia 
and Austria, refused to surrender the refugees. Hungary 
was crushed. Its political existence, for a time at least, 
seemed annihilated. 

Return to Absolutism in Austria. — A Constitutional As- 
sembly had met on July 22, 1848. In the polyglot body 
eight nationalities were reiDresented. It was a burning 
question as to which language should be declared official. 
The deputies sat like enemies in as many hostile groups. 
Every theory found fierce expression. Order and even 
decency of debate were impossible. Nevertheless at their 
request the emperor returned to the capital. In a street 
riot Latour, the minister of war, was stripped naked and 
hanged to a lamp-post. The timorous emperor fled to 
Olmiitz, thinking he would find his most trusty protectors 
among the Slavs. But he left a manifesto behind, wherein 
he declared that he would take such measures as he thought 
best to repress anarchy and preserve liberty. An imperial 
rescript suspended the sessions of the Assembly, although 
authorizing them to meet some weeks later at the Moravian 
town of Kremsier. Only a meagre fraction availed them- 
selves of the permission. Meanwhile Schwartzenberg was 
appointed to the Cabinet, inasmuch as he knew " how to put 
down revolutions." Yet the ministry made a general 
declaration in favor of constitutional liberty. Their most 
diflicult task was to find an equilibrium between the various 
Austrian states and to regulate the relations of the whole 
with Germany, of which the Austrian Empire constituted 
a part. Yet by March 4, 1849, an anomalous and imprac- 
ticable constitution had been devised. In the universal dis- 
content it was never put into execution. So Schwartzenberg 



A.D. lf^8-1852.] TRIUMPH OF REACTION IN EUROPE 563 

could well declare that it was only " a basis on which to 
reestablish the authority of the throne." On January 1, 
1852, this figment of a charter was definitely suppressed. 
Nothing had been gained except a slight improvement in 
the condition of the peasants. 

Defeat and Abdication of Charles Albert. — The king of 
Piedmont had staked his crown upon the issue of war. He 
dreamed of a reunited Italy under the leadership of his 
house. But provincial jealousies chilled enthusiasm and 
hampered unity of action. Each insurgent state concerned 
itself with its own interests and failed to realize that vic- 
tory was possible only through concerted effort. The king 
was a royalist, suspicious of republicanism and of any 
popular movement. He even disdained the volunteers who 
were ready to flock to his standard. Nevertheless many 
of those volunteer bands were to show surprising military 
qualities when pitted against the veterans of the enemy. 
Radetzki was one of the few able generals whom Austria 
has produced. Though over eighty years of age, he was 
a most formidable antagonist. 

On June 24, 1848, a day of intense heat, the decisive 
battle was fought at Custozza. The defeated Piedmontese 
withdrew to Milan where bitter quarrels broke out between 
them and the Milanese. The king surrendered the city and 
afterwards signed an armistice, agreeing to take no farther 
part in the war. He had hitherto refused the conditional 
assistance of the French. Now, when he implored it with- 
out conditions, it was too late. 

Custozza had really decided the fate of Italy. Her chief 
soldier withdrawn from the conflict, the submission of the 
peninsula to the old system was henceforth only a question 
of time. But the patriots held out with surprising tenacity 
and with even increasing vigor. Both at Florence and 
Rome democratic republics were proclaimed and consti- 
tutional assemblies convoked. A new wave of resolution 
swept over the land. But the political question had 
become complicated with the ecclesiastical question. Car- 
dinal Antonelli asked for the interference of the four 
Catholic Powers, Austria, France, Spain and Naples, in 
behalf of the Pope. Austria was ready to act, but Louis 
Napoleon despatched 7000 men to Rome, though the object 
of the expedition was not at first clear. Ferdinand of 
Naples had reduced Sicily and was trampling on his prom- 



564 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [ a. d. 1848-1849. 

ises of reform. Bombardment of his Sicilian cities had 
given him the nickname of "King Bomba," which the sub- 
sequent atrocities of his reign were to render odious. 

In Piedmont the vociferous populace and the parliament 
demanded that Charles Albert should again attack Austria, 
inasmuch as she was apparently the only foreign state 
which the Italian cause had to dread. The king yielded. 
But he counted on no assistance from Eome or Florence and 
he knew that his own army was disinclined to the war. 
He entered upon the campaign rather as a martyr than as a 
soldier. It was, and it could be, only disastrous. Despite 
the heroism of his troops, he met a crushing defeat at 
Novara. On the evening after the battle the unhappy 
sovereign abdicated the throne in favor of his son, Victor 
Emmanuel. 

The heart of revolution was now at Eome. Mazzini, like 
a modern Rienzi, and the impetuous Garibaldi inflamed the 
resolution of the people not to submit. But it was the 
French under General Oudinot and not the Austrians who 
attacked and then invested the city. After a siege, lasting 
twenty-nine days, despite prodigies of valor on the part of 
the besieged, the capital was taken and the Roman repub- 
lic overthrown by the soldiers of republican France (June 
29, 1849). 

The catastrophe of Novara and the fall of Rome could not 
shake the courage of Venice. Nowhere was the Austrian 
rule more abhorred, yet nowhere were fewer crimes and 
excesses committed in the effort to shake it off. Her re- 
sistance lasted seventeen months. During 146 days she 
experienced all the horrors of siege and bombardment. She 
succumbed only to the exhaustion caused by famine and 
cholera. To Venice and to her illustrious dictator, Manin, 
attaches purer glory than to any other Italian state or 
leader in the agony of the struggle. On August 28, 1849, 
the triumphant Austrian flag floated once more over the 
Piazza of Saint Mark. And the former rulers and the old 
ways were restored throughout Italy. 

Conservatism of Pius IX. — On his accession he had 
shown sympathy with constitutional liberty. But he 
dreaded the excesses of the democracy. Desirous of re- 
form, he wished it to come gently and gradually. The 
frenzied passion of Mazzini appalled him even more than 
did the iron rule of Ra?4etzki. Though a temporal prince, 



A.D. 1848-1850.] TRIUMPH OF REACTION IN EUROPE 565 

he shrank from military action because head of the church. 
So he refused to yield to popular clamor and declare war 
against Austria. But in September, 1848, he called Count 
Kossi to preside over the papal Cabinet, and thus indicated 
his fixed purpose to pursue a policy of moderate liberalism. 

There was at that time safety for no man in Rome unless 
an extremist. Two months later the capable and patriotic 
minister was stabbed by an anarchist on the very day when 
he was to open the session of the Chambers with a speech, 
promising to abolish the rule of the cardinals, to institute a 
lay government and to insist upon the emancipation and 
unification of Italy. A radical mob attacked the papal 
palace. The Pope in disguise escaped to Gaeta. When 
the Roman republic was proclaimed his temporal power was 
abolished. ]N"ot till 1850 did he return to his capital. No 
longer did he manifest any inclination toward reform. No 
triumph of reaction anywhere was more to be deplored than 
that which it had gained over the mind of the sovereign 
pontiff. 

Dissolution of the General Assembly at Frankfort. — 
Despite the patriotism and learning of its members, it is a 
melancholy fact that the Assembly was doomed to failure 
from the start. It had been elected to draw up a constitu- 
tion for all Germany, bat the degree of its authority was 
a disputed point and it possessed no means of enforcing its 
decrees. It could only discuss and recommend. There was 
not in Germany a race problem as in Austria, and on the 
part of the German peoples there was a common desire for 
union. But the country was still too torn by violent and 
determined factions and too distracted by the selfish aims 
of the different states to secure common and voluntary ac- 
ceptance of the salutary measures which might be proposed. 
Furthermore the deputies were not practical men but theo- 
rists without tact or political experience. 

For a time however its measures commanded respect. 
Thus, when it decided to replace the Diet by a central 
executive and elected Archduke John of Austria as admin- 
istrator of Germany, the archduke accepted the ofiice and 
the Diet resigned its authority into his hands. But when 
the troops of the confederation were ordered to swear fidelity 
to this administrator, Austria and Prussia ignored the order, 
and it was obeyed only in the smaller states. Fickleness in 
dealing with the troubles in Schleswig-Holstein weakened 



566 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1849. 

its influence. Days were wasted in sterile debates on trivial 
matters. 

At the same time, at Berlin, the Prussian national 
Assembly was holding stormy and fruitless sessions and the 
city itself was for months in a condition little better than 
anarchy. Tired of oratory and street turmoil, the Prus- 
sians were not displeased when royal decrees placed their 
capital under martial law and dissolved their Assembly. 
This failure of the Prussian Assembly at Berlin had an 
injurious effect upon the General Assembly at Frankfort. 

ISTevertheless, it patched together a constitution for the 
whole empire and elected as emperor Frederick William 
IV the king of Prussia. The constitution was at once 
rejected by Austria, Bavaria, Saxony and Hanover, and 
Frederick William in a guarded manner declined the crown. 
The Assembly daily dwindled away until less than a hun- 
dred delegates remained. It was removed to Stuttgart on 
May 30, 1849, and was finally dispersed by the police. 
Nothing had been gained. All things continued as they 
were before. 



THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 567 



IV 
THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 

The Plebiscites of 1851 and 1852. —A French plebiscite 
is an expression by universal suffrage wherein only " yes " 
or "no" is answered to a question submitted for decision. 
The constitution proposed December, 1851, was accepted 
and the presidential power for ten years conferred on Louis 
Napoleon by a plebiscite of 7,437,216 "yes" and 640,737 
"no." 

The decennial presidency heralded the empire. A year 
afterwards the Senate asked for a plebiscite on the propo- 
sition that the empire should be restored in the person of 
Louis Napoleon and of his descendants. The affirmative 
vote was 8,157,752, the negative 254,501. So the empire 
was solemnly proclaimed on December 2, 1852, the anni- 
versary of the coronation of the first Napoleon. The 
crowned president was speedily recognized as Napoleon 
III by all the courts of Europe. In the following January 
he married a Spanish lady of Scottish ancestry, Eugenie de 
Montijo, Countess of Teba. 

Worn out by the turmoils of the preceding years, indig- 
nant at the secondary role she had filled in Europe since 
1815, France desired a strong government which would 
ensure tranquillity at home, and hence restore credit and 
develop material prosperity while at the same time making 
her respected abroad. There can be no doubt that the vast 
majority of the people were content to leave in the hands 
of the new " emperor of the French " a power hardly in- 
ferior to that exercised by a sultan or shah. The constitu- 
tion centralized all authority in the person of its elected 
chief. He alone could command the army, direct public 
policy, decide upon war, and conclude peace. The min- 
isters, appointed by him, were responsible only to him. 
They were rather his secretaries or functionaries than a 
cabinet. The legislative body, elected for six years, voted 
upon the taxes and the laws submitted to it by the Council 



568 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1853-1856. 

of State, but could of its own initiative propose nothing. 
Tlie Senate consisted of 150 members, who were appointed 
for life by the emperor. It revised the laws voted by the 
legislative body and could accept or reject them as it 
deemed best. The Council of State was likewise named by 
the sovereign. 

The Crimean War (1853-1856). — A famous apothegm of 
Napoleon III, "The empire is peace," was to be refuted by 
events in Eastern Europe. Since the days of Erancis I and 
Souleiman the Magnificent, Erance had been the traditional 
ally of the Ottoman Empire. Sometimes, as under Napo- 
leon I, such relations had been interrupted, but the senti- 
ment none the less existed. Eurthermore, France was 
recognized by the Ottomans as the protectress of Latin 
Christians in the East. So, when troubles broke out in 
1853 between Russia and Turkey, — nominally over a monk- 
ish question as to the guardianship of certain holy places 
in Jerusalem and as to the claim of the Tsar to exercise 
protection over the Orthodox Greek subjects of the Sultan, 
— Napoleon found a felicitous occasion to draw the sword. 

Great Britain was above all other states interested in the 
maintenance of the Ottoman Empire. The sovereign of 
the Erench, though oihcially recognized, was everywhere 
regarded as an imperial parvenu. An alliance between 
him and Queen Victoria, granddaughter of George III, — 
the only sovereign in Europe who had persistently refused 
to acknowledge Napoleon I as emperor, — would dazzle the 
Erench and add a peculiar splendor to his crown. His 
overtures were well received. When the Ottoman fleet in 
the bay of Sinope was destroyed by the Russians (Novem- 
ber 30, 1853), the Erench and British squadrons entered 
the Black Sea. A few months later, Erance and Great 
Britain signed a treaty with Turkey and formed an offen- 
sive and defensive alliance with each other. 

Prussia though inactive sympathized with Russia. 
Austria hesitated, remembering that her endangered polit- 
ical existence had been preserved by Russia in 1849, and 
yet not unwilling that the overshadowing Muscovite Em- 
pire should receive a check. Without allying herself with 
the Western Powers, she demanded that the Russians 
should evacuate the Danubian principalities which they 
had occupied. 

Cronstadt in the Baltic was the key of St. Petersburg. 



A.D. 185S-1856.] THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 569 

Failing in attack upon this fortress, which the British 
admiral in command, Sir Charles Napier, declared was im- 
pregnable, the allies resolved to concentrate their efforts in 
an invasion of Russia from the south. Odessa had been 
successfully bombarded in April. 

A French army under Marshal St. Arnaud and an Eng- 
lish army under Lord Raglan landed at Gallipoli on the 
Dardanelles. The Russians, who were furthermore threat- 
ened on the west by the Austrians, evacuated the princi- 
palities and recrossed the Pruth. Austria at once occupied 
the abandoned provinces, promising to restore them to the 
Sultan on the conclusion of peace. 

It was decided to attack Sebastopol, the great arsenal of 
Russia in the Crimea and the military centre from which 
she threatened the south. The city was at that time utterly 
unprepared to withstand a siege. On September 24 a 
fleet of 500 ships disembarked 30,000 French, 27,000 Brit- 
ish, and 7000 Turks at Eupatoria, thirty miles to the north. 

The operations against the beleaguered city went on 
under various forms for 351 days. The Russian generals, 
Mentshikoff, Todleben and Korniloff, strengthened the 
defences and resisted with Russian obstinacy. The battles 
of Alma, Balaclava and Inkerman were favorable on the 
whole to the allies. Meanwhile St. Arnaud died and was 
succeeded by Marshal Canrobert, who, exhausted, gave way 
to General Pelissier. Lord Raglan died and was replaced 
by General James Simpson. The soldiers, especially the 
British, suffered horribly in a winter of unusual vigor. In 
a single storm twenty-one transports were wrecked. Pied- 
mont, glad to make its existence remembered, sent to the 
assistance of the allies a little army of 18,000 well-equipped 
men. Together with the French they won the battle of 
Tchernaya (August 16), the decisive action of the campaign. 
By September 8 everything was ready for the final assault. 
The two chief defences of the city were the Malakoff and 
the Great Redan. The French successfully stormed the 
former, but the British, despite their desperate courage, 
were unable to capture the latter. However, the Malakoff 
taken, further resistance was useless, and the Russian army 
withdrew. 

In Asia the Russian arms had been successful and they 
had captured the stronghold of Kars, which commanded the 
eastern approaches to Asia Minor. 



570 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1855-1859. 

Sebastopol was in the hands of the conquerors. To make 
themselves masters of it, the allies had sacrificed the lives 
of more than 100,000 of their troops. Russia's losses were 
even greater. Nevertheless the utmost efforts of four 
Powers, assisted by the military interference of Austria, 
had only sufficed to reduce a fortress on the extreme 
southern verge of her empire. Her frontier had been 
touched but she had not been really invaded. The Tsar 
Nicholas I had died on March 2, 1855, and been succeeded 
by the milder and less persistent Alexander XL 

The treaty was signed at Paris on March 30, 1856. It 
neutralized the Black Sea, guaranteed liberty of navigation 
in the Danube, from which it removed Russia by a slight 
rectification of her western frontier, and abolished the 
protectorate of Russia over the Danubian provinces and 
over her coreligionists in Turkey. Turkey was admitted 
to the international concert of states, and the Hatti Sherif 
of the Sultan, promising religious privileges to his non- 
Mussulman subjects, was incorporated in the treaty as a 
contract between him and Europe. 

However gravely accepted and proclaimed, most of these 
conditions could be regarded only in the light of temporary 
accommodation. The really important achievement of the 
congress was its enunciation of the four following princi- 
ples in international law: privateering is abolished; the 
neutral flag covers an enemy's goods, except contraband of 
war; neutral goods, except contraband of war, are exempt 
from capture even under an enemy's flag; a blockade to be 
respected must be effectual. 

It was a splendid triumph for the French emperor and 
for France when the congress assembled at Paris to deter- 
mine the conditions of peace. In the eyes of his people 
Napoleon HI appeared to be the arbiter of the continent. 
The distant campaign had been attended with frightful 
loss in money and men, but it was forgotten in such glory 
as had not attended the French arms since the first Napo- 
leon invaded Russia. 

War with Austria (1859). — Piedmont, the only inde- 
pendent and constitutional Italian state, had won the 
gratitude of France and of Great Britain by her coopera- 
tion in the Crimean War. Her prime minister. Count 
Cavour, had taken part in the Congress of Paris and had 
dexterously improved the occasion to denounce the mis- 



A.D. 1859.] THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 571 

government of central and soutliern Italy and to arraign 
the Austrian occupation of Lombardy and Venice. Thereby 
he thrust the Italian question to the forefront of Europe. 
In 1858 he made a secret treaty with Napoleon, the object 
of which was the expulsion of Austria from the peninsula, 
and in January, 1859, cemented the relations of France and 
Piedmont by the marriage of Prince Napoleon, cousin of 
the emperor, to the Princess Clotilda, daughter of Victor 
Emmanuel. 

While all Europe was considering a proposition from 
the British court for general disarmament, Austria com- 
mitted a political blunder disastrous to herself. She 
addressed a note to the Piedmontese court, demanding the 
disarmament of their troops in the space of three days. 
Cavour gave a diplomatic reply, though gross provocation 
had come from Austria. Six days later she crossed the 
Ticino, this act being equivalent to a declaration of war 
against not only Piedmont but France. Napoleon wished 
to win for himself some of the military laurels his generals 
had gained in the Crimea, and took command in person. 
In his progress southward through France he was hailed 
with tremendous enthusiasm by the citizens, who rejoiced 
that their armies were again to fight the battles of Italian 
liberty. 

The campaign was short but eventful. A main factor in 
determining the result was the proverbial slowness and in- 
decision of the Austrian generals. General Forey with 
inferior forces defeated the enemy at Montebello (May 
20). Marshal MacMahon gained a battle at Magenta 
(June 2), where the Austrians lost 20,000 killed and 
wounded and 7000 prisoners. The victors entered Milan 
amid a delirium of joy. Abandoning Lombardy, the Aus- 
trians concentrated 160,000 troops for a decisive action at 
Solferino. The French and Piedmontese forces were almost 
as numerous. The two emperors were in command. After 
a ten hours' battle the Austrians were compelled to retreat, 
leaving 30,000 men upon the field (June 24). Napoleon 
slept that night in the chamber which his imperial antago- 
nist had occupied in the morning. 

Napoleon had declared that he would free Italy from the 
Alps to the Adriatic. But his position was one of extreme 
peril. The famous quadrilateral was still held by the 
enemy. Numerous reenforcements were pouring into the 



572 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1852-1867. 

Austrian camp. ^Prussia and the southwestern German 
states, dismayed at the progress of revolutionary ideas and 
unwilling to see France too victorious, showed a disposition 
to take part in the war. A proposition for an interview 
was made to Francis Joseph, and at Villafranca the two 
sovereigns signed the preliminaries of peace, afterwards 
confirmed by the treaty of Zurich. Lombardy was annexed 
to Piedmont. The sovereigns of Tuscany and Modena were 
to return to their states, but no foreign armies were to aid 
them in securing repossession. An Italian federation was 
to be formed under the presidency of the Pope. Piedmont 
skilfully kept herself free from entangling promises as to 
the future of Italy. Savoy and Nice, after a plebiscite of 
their inhabitants expressing the desire therefor, were 
annexed to France. 

Material Progress (1852-1867). — These years are marked 
by brilliant prosperity. Under a strong and presumably 
stable government the people were no longer disturbed 
by fear of revolution and devoted themselves with ardor 
to every branch of activity. Whoever wished could obtain 
work at a fair remuneration, and capital found lucrative 
avenues everywhere open. Private and public enterprise 
covered France with a network of railroads. Highways 
were laid out and bridges constructed in all directions. 
Easier and cheaper means of communication were both a 
cause and result of wonderful development in manufactures 
and trade. Docks were constructed and harbors dug or 
enlarged. Great loan companies assisted labor and savings- 
banks sprang up to receive its earnings. Numerous cham- 
bers of commerce and agriculture were founded. Duties 
on grain were abolished. Sagacious commercial treaties 
with Great Britain, Italy, Belgium and other states favored 
the export of French products and introduced foreign 
products at cheaper rates. In thirteen years the exports 
and imports trebled in value. 

Hospitals were multiplied. Convalescent homes, as at 
Vincennes, Vesinet, and Longchene, orphanages, asylums 
and all conceivable institutions of beneficence and philan- 
thropy were established. Here governmental and private 
generosity rivalled each other. Popular education devel- 
oped as never before in France. The pupils increased by 
1,000,000 in fifteen years. Special attention was paid to 
professional, industrial and technical schools. The law 



A.D. 1867.] THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 573 

of April 10, 1867, specifically provided for the education 
of girls. An immense number of school libraries were 
founded. Instruction seemed an antidote for crime. "Ac- 
cording as the schools filled up the prisons emptied." 

Paris, congested in narrow and crooked streets, was re- 
built on a magnificent scale by Baron Haussmann, prefect 
of the Seine. Even the Louvre, hitherto unfinished, was 
completed. Lyons and Marseilles were almost transformed. 
The same thing went on upon a proportional scale in the 
other cities and towns. Public gardens and parks were 
created for the diversion and health of the people. Sani- 
tary measures diminished the death-rate. A sense of well- 
being and comfort pervaded the country. 

The Universal Exposition of 1867. — This was the visible 
expression of all the material prosperity under the empire. 
It may be called also the culmination of its glory. 

The Champ de Mars was converted into a city of exhibi- 
tion, or a world bazaar. In the centre rose an enormous 
palace in iron and glass, enclosing an area of thirty-six 
acres, packed in bewildering fashion with whatever was 
most valuable and rare. This palace was over 1600 feet 
long and almost 1300 in width. It was surrounded by 
gardens adorned with works of art and edifices represent- 
ing the architecture, manner of life and occupations of all 
nations. From all over the globe manufacturers, inventors, 
agriculturists, artists, merchants flocked to Paris to there 
exhibit and behold all the achievements of peace and to vie 
with one another in the display of their various products. 
It was a tournament of all mankind, where international 
juries awarded prizes for the best things which the human 
hand and brain had done. No equal international exhibi- 
tion had ever been held. It surpassed every other in the 
number, variety and excellence of the articles displayed, 
and these articles represented every department of human 
science and activity. There were 51,819 exhibitors, and 
it was visited daily during six months by over 70,000 per- 
sons. 

Inevitably, because held in France and other nations 
were more or less remote, the French exhibit was superior 
to the rest. The French might take a legitimate pride, 
not only in the fact that the marvellous exhibition was 
devised by them, but in the preeminent splendor of their 
share in the exhibit. Napoleon and France occupied 



574 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1862-1867. 

the proud position of hosts. The most enlightened for- 
eigners by tens and hundreds of thousands thronged their 
capital as guests. The emperors of Russia and Austria, 
the queen of Great Britain, the kings of Italy, Prussia, 
Belgium, Sweden and Denmark, the sultan of the Ottoman 
Empire, and numerous other rulers of civilized or barbarous 
states by their presence added to the dignity and enhanced 
the magnificence of the occasion. Paris for half a year 
was decked as in a perpetual fete. 

Humiliations of the Empire. — Two were of such a nature 
as to be peculiarly galling to a sensitive people. The first 
and most important was administered by the United States. 
In 1862 France, Great Britain and Spain sent a joint mili- 
tary expedition to Mexico to enforce the payment of certain 
claims. When their ostensible object was attained Great 
Britain and Spain withdrew. The United States were then 
engaged in a civil war, which Napoleon believed would end 
in the dissolution of the Union. Therefore he judged the 
occasion favorable to set up a Latin empire, which should 
conterpoise any Anglo-Saxon republics in the Western world. 
The Archduke Maximilian, brother of the emperor of Aus- 
tria, consented to accept the crown to be wrung for him 
from Mexico, Napoleon promising to maintain an army of 
25,000 French soldiers for the protection of the new em- 
peror. The American government had refused to recognize 
any authority in Mexico except that of the dispossessed 
president, Juarez, but, its hands tied by the civil war, was 
unable to do more. After the confederacy was overthrown, 
it notified Napoleon that his soldiers must be withdrawn. 
The French emperor judged it expedient to comply, though 
in so doing he violated his promise to Maximilian and igno- 
miniously left him to destruction. Meanwhile Carlotta, 
the devoted wife of Maximilian, journeyed from court to 
court in Europe, entreating assistance for her husband and 
denouncing the desertion of him by Napoleon. Successive 
disappointments overthrew her reason. The Mexican Em- 
pire was destroyed by Juarez, and Maximilian was finally 
captured and shot as a usurper (June 19, 1867). The news 
of the terrible disaster reached Europe while Paris was in the 
full tide of the Universal Exposition and cast a gloom upon 
the gayety and brilliancy of the occasion. The French 
Empire never recovered from the shock of this Mexican 
failure. 



A.D. 1866-1870.] THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 575 

The second humiliation was the work of Count von Bis- 
marck, president of the Prussian Cabinet. In the Prusso- 
Austrian war of 1866 it was of supreme importance to the 
Prussians to prevent the interference of Prance whose sym- 
pathies lay with Austria. So Bismarck gave Napoleon to 
understand that in case Prussia was victorious and increased 
her territory, France should receive an equivalent by the 
annexation of Luxemburg on her northeastern frontier. 
The war ended in the aggrandizement of Prussia. There- 
upon Napoleon demanded the cession of Luxemburg, but 
Bismarck now informed him that the Germans were opposed 
to any such arrangement, and that hence it was impossible. 
Napoleon had thus been ridiculously outwitted in the face 
of all Europe. But France was utterly unprepared for war 
and could only submit to the blow dealt her own and her 
emperor's prestige. 

The third humiliation of the empire was inflicted upon it 
by the people in the plebiscite of May 8, 1870. By vari- 
ous modifications, introduced voluntarily by the sovereign, 
the government had passed from the absolute autocracy of 
1852 to the constitutional or parliamentary monarchy of 
1870. Political exiles had been amnestied and made eligible 
to office. Gradually concessions, although not extorted, 
had been granted until the country enjoyed freedom of the 
press, of parliamentary criticism and debate, responsibility 
of the ministers to the Chamber, and a constitution revised 
in a liberal sense. By the latter, granted April 20, 1870, 
the legislative power was shared by the Senate and the 
Chamber, while all power to further change the constitu- 
tion was intrusted to the people. Upon the advice of his 
minister, M. Rouher, the emperor asked a plebiscite con- 
cerning the reforms successively introduced and the revised 
constitution. An affirmative vote was furthermore under- 
stood to mean attachment to the reigning dynasty. Though 
there were only 1,500,000 nays to over 7,000,000 yeas, the 
negative vote was surprisingly large and also alarming in 
what it represented. While the rural districts were to all 
intents unanimous, an immense dissatisfaction with the 
state of things was revealed by the vote of Paris, the larger 
cities, and the army. Moreover, many of its adherents 
were indignant at the recent course of the government in 
despatching French troops to put down Garibaldi and in 
declaring its intention to maintain by arms the temporal 



576 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1870-1871. 

power of the Pope. The plebiscite, despite the immense 
majority of 5,500,000, was considered a rebuff. 

The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). — An increasing 
exasperation of the French against the Prussians and a 
growing animosity between the two states had existed ever 
since the Prusso-Austrian war. An ultimate conflict was 
inevitable. Events concurred to hasten the catastrophe. 

The Spaniards, who had expelled their Bourbon dynasty, 
offered the Spanish crown to Prince Leopold of Hohen- 
zollern, a near kinsman of William I, king of Prussia. 
All France was on fire with excitement. Nor was the agi- 
tation allayed when it was heard that the prince had de- 
clined the offer. The foreign minister, the Duke de 
Gramont, the Empress Eugenie, the Chamber and the 
populace of Paris did their utmost to fan the flames. 
Napoleon and the calmer heads, like Thiers, were averse 
to war. But the emperor, exhausted by the ravages of an 
incurable malady, was no longer the cool, firm man who 
had executed the coup d'etat or commanded at Solferino. 
The Duke de Gramont asserted, "We are ready, more than 
ready," and the prime minister, Ollivier, announced, "We 
accept the responsibility with a light heart!" War was 
declared by France on July 15, 1870. Never was a war a 
more rapid succession of disasters. 

Prussia, under William I, Von Moltke, minister of war, 
and Von Bismarck had for years been steadily preparing 
for the struggle which she knew was to come. No nation 
was ever more terribly ready. Not a shoe-latchet was 
wanting to the troops. Treaties assured her the active 
support of all Germany. Even the plans of campaign were 
all matured. France had not an ally on whom to depend. 
Her regiments were incomplete, ill provisioned and ill 
armed. Yet, intoxicated with rage and overweening confi- 
dence in herself, she threw herself into the conflict as a 
gambler risks his all upon a throw. 

The French armies were mobilized with distressing slow- 
ness. Twenty days after the declaration of war the hostile 
forces had invaded France. The crown prince of Prussia 
defeated General Douay at Weissenburg (August 4), and, 
two days later, with 100,000 men destroyed an army ojf 
45,000 men under Marshal MacMahon at Worth. Then, 
as all through the war, the French fought with desperate 
courage and determination. But heroism without plan and 



A.D. 1870.] THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE ^11 

with inferior arms was of no avail against equal heroism 
attended by superior numbers and skill. The battle of 
Worth was decisive of the campaign. By the victory the 
Prusso-German forces projected into France like a mighty 
wedge, and afterwards the French main armies, pressed to 
the right and left, could never unite. Moreover, Austria 
and Italy, who might have assisted France, were disin- 
clined to join their fortunes to a lost cause. Skilful 
manoeuvres and the victories of Forbach and Gravelotte 
succeeded in hemming the commander-in-chief. Marshal 
Bazaine, with 173,000 men, inside the fortifications of 
Metz. There he was at once besieged by the crown prince 
of Saxony. 

Sedan. — A forlorn hope remained for the deliverance 
of Bazaine. Marshal MacMahon, the ablest general of 
France, with 130,000 troops marched to his relief. But he 
was hampered by the presence of the emperor, who had 
left the Empress Eugenie as regent, and by the constant 
interference of the French minister of war, Count Palikao. 
AVhile in the valley of Sedan his army was surrounded by 
250,000 Germans, who, by forced marches and in perfect 
obedience to concerted plans, had closed in upon them. 
Retreat or advance was impossible. After three days of 
hopeless fight and terrible loss, the French surrendered, 
Napoleon himself offering his sword to King William. 
Together with the emperor 104,000 men had been taken 
prisoners. 

Fall of the Empire (September 4, 1870). — The news of 
the surrender was received at Paris with frenzy. The mob 
took control, pronounced the deposition of the emperor and 
proclaimed the republic. On the pillars of the Palace 
Bourbon they chalked the names of those whom they 
wished to direct affairs and who, without further election, 
assumed authority as the Government of National Defence. 
General Trochu was made President, Jules Favre, minister 
of foreign affairs, Gambetta, minister of the interior, 
Jules Simon, minister of public instruction, and General 
Le Flo, minister of war. Their attempts to place the 
responsibility for the war upon Napoleon were coldly re- 
ceived by the Germans, who furthermore showed unwill- 
ingness to treat with an irresponsible government. M. 
Thiers was sent to London, St. Petersburg, Vienna and 
Florence to beg assistance, but everywhere in vain. Jules 
2p 



678 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1870-1871. 

Favre declared that France would not yield an inch of her 
soil, and the Germans had resolved to consider no proposi- 
tions of peace that did not include the acquisition of Alsace 
and Lorraine. 

Surrender of Metz (October 27). — Completely shut in, 
Marshal Bazaiiie received only such news of the condition 
of France as the enemy judged expedient. Cut off from all 
hope of rescue, his cavalry and artillery horses killed for 
food, his provisions exhausted, he surrendered. His army 
of 173,000 men was sent to Germany to share the captivity 
of the prisoners of Sedan. A capitulation on such an 
enormous scale was unexampled. No event in the war has 
been more bitterly criticised and its necessity more angrily 
disputed. After the cessation of hostilities Bazaine was 
tried by a court-martial and condemned to death. 

In spite of obstinate resistance, Toul (September 23), 
Strasburg (September 28), Verdun (November 8), and all 
the fortified places of northwestern France, except Belfort, 
were one after the other forced to capitulate. 

Siege and Surrender of Paris (January 28, 1871). — The 
siege of Paris began on September 19. Gambetta escaped 
in a balloon (passing over the German lines), and reaching 
Toul became a virtual dictator. Infusing his own wild 
energy into the people of central and southern France, he 
induced them to prolong a hopeless struggle. Yet each 
day's added resistance could only increase the general suf- 
fering and force harsher terms upon France in the end. 
Meanwhile the enemy, leaving sufficient forces for the siege 
of Paris, deluged the country on the west and south. The 
untrained levies under Generals Aurelle de Paladines and 
Bourbaki could only delay but not prevent their advance. 

Paris held out for 142 days. The city, esteemed frivolous, 
showed such sternness and tenacity in defence as no other 
great capital has ever equalled. Each desperate sortie drew 
the iron bands tighter around her, and she yielded at last, 
not to the Germans but to famine. The German Empire 
had been proclaimed in the Palace of Versailles ten days 
before. Even then Gambetta was unwilling to give up, and 
resigned his office only when he had been disavowed by the 
government of Paris. 

The Treaty of Frankfort. — In the hour of her extremest 
distress France turned to her one statesman, Thiers. He 
could not save her, but he might somewhat alleviate the 



A.D. 1871.] THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 579 

miseries of her fall. The National Assembly, elected by 
German consent, met at Bordeaux. The Government of 
National Defence laid down its powers. Thiers was ap- 
pointed to form a ministry and negotiate terms of peace. 
With Count Bismarck he wrestled over each point in the 
Prussian demands. Hard though the terms imposed, they 
would have been still harder but for him. It was agreed 
that France should pay $1,000,000,000 indemnity in the 
space of three years, and that all Alsace except Belfort, 
and one-fifth of Lorraine including Metz should be annexed 
to Germany. The evacuation of territory was to take place 
proportionally as the indemnity was paid. 

This preliminary treaty was approved by the French 
Assembly on March 2 and formally ratified at Frankfort on 
May 10, 1871. 



580 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY 



GERMANY 
(1848-1871) 

Rivalry of Prussia and Austria. — Of the thirty-eight 
sovereignties which composed the German Confederation, 
Austria and Prussia were by far the most important. Both 
were disliked by the other German states, but Austria, al- 
though the larger and stronger, was dreaded less than Prus- 
sia. During the preceding 150 years they had gradually 
approached each other by an inverse process, the one by 
intermittent development and expansion, the other by 
intermittent decline, until they stood almost upon a par. 
Liberty had nothing to hope from the government of either. 
Nor could it be expected that either would advance the 
cause of German union except by making other and weaker 
states dependent upon itself. Prussia, because of her more 
restricted territory and smaller population, caused less 
anxiety to Europe than did Austria, who, because an ag- 
glomeration of races, never could rally the Germans to the 
cry of nationality. 

The problem what to do with Austria had disturbed the 
wordy National Assembly at Frankfort in 1848 and 1849. 
Some of the delegates proposed that she should remain a 
state apart, either abandoning her German provinces or 
retaining them, but in any case to be reckoned outside of 
Germany. Other delegates proposed that all the German 
states and all the Austrian provinces of whatever race 
should combine in one enormous empire, spanning Europe 
from the Baltic to the Adriatic, and that Austria should be 
its head. The first of these propositions may be called the 
Prussian, and the second proposition the Austrian plan. 
This crucial question received its solution only eighteen 
years afterwards, and meanwhile affected the whole current 
of German politics. 

Question of Schleswig-Holstein (1848-1855). —Schleswig 



A.D. 1848-1863.] GERMANY 581 

and Holstein are two duchies lying between Denmark and 
Germany. The inhabitants of the former were mainly, 
and of the latter exclusively, German. Both enjoyed a 
separate political existence, with their own customs and 
laws, although their sovereign was the king of Denmark. 
Frederick VII at his accession incorporated Schleswig with 
his Danish states. But the German Diet as formally in- 
corporated Schleswig with Germany and appointed Prussia 
by the sword to carry this action into effect. The Danes 
gained the advantage in battle. A protocol, signed at 
London in 1850 by Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, 
Sweden and Denmark, and another treaty in 1852, intro- 
duced diplomatic arrangements which decided little, con- 
tented no one, but contained the germ of future trouble. 

The king went on with his attempted Danification of the 
duchies. In 1855 he published a constitution wherein the 
same laws were applied indiscriminately to them and to all 
his other provinces. The duchies protested, Germany 
threatened to interfere, and Frederick granted certain con- 
cessions. The general irritation did not diminish. Rely- 
ing on the promise of Great Britain to protect the integrity 
of Danish territory and swept along by the enthusiasm of 
the Danes, the king persisted in measures that were both 
impolitic and unjust. In 1863 by a manifesto he assimi- 
lated Schleswig to his other possessions and declared that 
Holstein should pay certain taxes, which had not been voted 
by her Estates. After fruitless negotiations the German 
Diet determined on armed intervention and occupied Hol- 
stein by Saxon and Hanoverian troops (December, 1863). 
The Danish forces withdrew without resistance into Schles- 
wig. Thus far the contention had been one of race. The 
Danes had determined to blot out the German character of 
the duchies, which the inhabitants of those duchies were as 
determined to retain. 

King William I and Otto von Bismarck. — On January 
2, 1861, William I ascended the Prussian throne. His 
brother, Frederick William IV, suffering from insanity, he 
had acted as regent during the preceding two years. He 
was a man of strong character and decided opinions, fully 
persuaded of the divine right of kings. His despotic sen- 
timents often brought him into collision with the people, 
and he was by no means popular. A soldier from his birth, 
he believed the welfare of Prussia was bound up in the army. 



582 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1861-1864. 

Though otherwise evincing no extraordinary talents, he 
showed remarkable sagacity in the choice of men for im- 
portant positions. Then he honored them with his full 
confidence, and, absolute as he was, allowed them wide 
latitude in carrying out his ideas. In the autumn after his 
accession he appointed Otto von Bismarck Minister of 
Foreign Affairs and President of the Cabinet. No other 
choice could have been equally felicitous. If the renown of 
the minister afterwards overshadowed that of the master, it 
was largely gained by the fidelity as well as the wonderful 
ability of his services. From 1862 to 1870 the biography 
of Bismarck is the history of Prussia; from 1870 to 1890 
his biography is the history of Germany. In an epoch- 
making age he stands without a peer among the statesmen 
of continental Europe. 

A conflict was pending in 1862 between the king and the 
Prussian parliament over the bill reorganizing the army. 
The scheme proposed more than doubled the numbers of its 
troops while vastly increasing their efficiency. But the 
people saw in the project only an additional weapon of 
despotism. The lower Chamber loaded the bill with 
amendments and finally rejected it altogether. Bismarck 
had no respect for popular votes or parliamentary majori- 
ties. Already he had declared that the great questions of 
the time were to be settled "by blood and iron." He ad- 
vised the king to prorogue the Chambers, silence the press, 
and reorganize the army as he pleased. His advice was 
followed. 

The military system of Prussia, which was to defeat 
Austria, crush France and reunite Germany, was the result. 
But it was founded none the less on a royal usurpation of 
legislative rights. 

Austro-Prussian Occupation of Schleswig-Holstein (1863- 
1864). — The troubles in the duchies afforded Bismarck 
an admirable opportunity. First he strenuously persuaded 
Austria to join Prussia and interfere, regardless of the 
Diet and of the wishes of the other German states. After 
sending an ultimatum to Copenhagen, which was rejected, 
the Prussian and Austrian forces invaded Denmark, not 
as the armed agents of Germany or in behalf of the duchies, 
but solely on their own account. The little nation was 
helpless against their attack. Neither did she receive 
the promised aid of Great Britain. By the treaty of 



A.D. 1864-1866.] GERMANY 583 

Vienna (October 30, 1864) Christian IX was obliged to 
cede all the disputed territory to Prussia and Austria 
jointly. The odium of the conquest fell equally on the two 
Powers, but the gains were to be reaped only by Prussia. 
By the convention of Gastein — one of the most brilliant 
diplomatic triumphs Bismarck ever won — to her was as- 
signed Schleswig with the seaport of Kiel in Holstein. 
Austria was to retain Holstein, a distant acquisition, which 
could only be to her a source of weakness and a cause of 
future trouble. 

Seven Weeks' War between Prussia and Austria (1866). 
— Prussia was at last ready for the final struggle against 
her adversary. Her army was fully disciplined and 
equipped. Great Britain, France and Russia endeavored 
to mediate and prevent the war, but to no purpose. Most 
of the German states sided with Austria. On June 15 
Prussia declared war against Hanover, Hesse and Saxony. 
On the 20th Italy, whose offensive and defensive alliance 
had been gained by the promise of Venetia, declared war 
against Austria and Bavaria. Meanwhile Prussia bad 
500,000 men under arms. She struck with astounding 
rapidity, but Austria and her allies moved as in sleep or 
stupor. Within a week Hanover, Hesse and Saxony were 
subdued, their armies captured or destroyed and their 
kings in flight. Into Bohemia, whose passes were unde- 
fended, poured 280,000 men with 800 guns. Marshal 
Benedek had no more than 210,000 men and 762 guns of 
inferior calibre with which to oppose them. In two days^ 
time he lost a sixth of his army and sent word to the Aus- 
trian emperor that his only hope was in peace. The reply 
was an order to give battle, and the order was obeyed. 

Sadowa (July 3, 1866). — Benedek chose a strong posi- 
tion at Sadowa in an amphitheatre of wooded hills in front 
of Koniggratz, the Elbe being in his rear. With the pre- 
cision of a machine his foes in three several armies under 
King William, Count von Moltke, the Minister of War, 
the Crown Prince, General von Eoon, General Hiller, Prince 
Frederick Charles and other of the ablest commanders in 
Europe were marching upon him. Even Bismarck was 
there to rejoice in the ruin for which he had prepared the 
way and to conduct the negotiations after the already 
certain victory. 

The Prussians began their attack at three o'clock in the 



584 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1866-1871. 

morning. The Crown Prince of Prussia with his army was 
to reach his position on the extreme Austrian right ten 
hours later. The Austrians held their ground with un- 
flinching courage, but mere gallantry is a minor element in 
modern warfare. Even the fog fought for the Prussians 
and masked the movements of the Crown Prince until his 
army assailed and destroyed the Austrian right. Driven 
from their lines by the always mounting tide of the attack, 
the soldiers of Benedek at last gave way and in one enor- 
mous broken mass rushed toward the river. That day's 
fighting cost Austria 4190 killed, 11,900 wounded, 20,000 
prisoners and 160 cannon. Above all, it hurled her out of 
Germany and crowned Prussia, her hereditary foe, with 
the leadership over the Germans. 

It is common to ascribe the victory at Sadowa to the 
Prussian needle-gun, which, though carrying a shorter dis- 
tance, could be fired five times as fast as the Austrian 
cannon and with far deadlier effect. The superiority of 
this weapon however was but one among the many factors 
that ensured Prussian success. 

The road to Vienna was open. There was no army to 
oppose the advance of the invaders. After ineffectual at- 
tempts at negotiation, Austria implored the mediation of 
Kapoleon to secure peace, thereby abandoning her as yet 
unconc[uered and unattacked allies, Bavaria, Baden, Wiir- 
temberg, Hesse and other south German states. They 
were subdued with celerity. 

Meanwhile, Austrian dynastic pride was soothed by the 
victory of the Archduke Albert over the Italians at Custozza 
(June 24), an ill-omened field for Italy, and by the destruc- 
tion of the Italian navy at Lissa (July 20) by Admiral 
Tegetthoff. 

Hegemony of Prussia (1866-1871). — The conditions of 
peace were, as always, hard for the vanquished. Austria 
recognized her exclusion from Germany, abandoned her 
claims to Schleswig and Holstein, ceded Venetia to Italy, 
agreed to pay an indemnity of 20,000,000 thalers, and left 
Prussia free to organize Germany as she pleased. 

Prussia added to her territory Hanover, despite the pro- 
tests of Great Britain, the electorate of Hesse, Nassau, the 
free city of Frankfort, Schleswig-Holstein and certain 
smaller territories to facilitate her internal communica- 
tions. Upon the states of southern Germany, Bavaria, 



A.D. 1871.] GERMANY 585 

Wiirtemberg and Baden, she imposed treaties of offensive 
and defensive alliance, and was also guaranteed the com- 
mand of their armies in case of war. These treaties how- 
ever were to be kept profoundly secret. 

The most manifest and imposing monument of Sadowa 
was the North German Confederation, of which the king 
of Prussia was president. It comprised Prussia and in 
general all the states north of the river Main. Though a 
federal parliament, the Reichstag, wa» created, each state 
retained its own chambers and local laws. A federal coun- 
cil, wherein out of forty-three votes Prussia had seventeen, 
regulated federal relations. Even the reluctant southern 
kingdoms were shrewdly interested in the nev/ order, being 
requested to send delegates who, together with the mem- 
bers of the Reichstag, should decide the customs-dues and 
the tariff regulations of all Germany. The North German 
Confederation was the sure prophesy of the speedy German 
unification under a German Empire. 

The colors of Prussia were black and white. The new 
national standard in its union of black, white and red pro- 
claimed her hegemony. 

Unification of Germany (1871). — It is a truism, but none 
the less true, that it was the Prussian schoolmaster who 
gained the battle of Sadowa. Success intensified rather 
than relaxed the efforts and ambitions of the mighty men 
who controlled the destinies of Prussia. Every energy was 
devoted to preparation for the next war, which, whoever 
the aggressor, all Europe foresaw would be with France. 
The Prussian generals, diplomats and statesmen formed a 
galaxy, rare in any age, and above them towered the king, 
Von Bismarck and Von Moltke. " Let us work fast, gen- 
tlemen," said Bismarck. "Let us put Germany in the 
saddle. She will know how to ride." In 1868 Von Moltke 
laid before the king his plan of campaign in case of the 
invasion of France. 

In a mad hour like an angry child France drew the sword. 
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, with the dethrone- 
ment of the Napoleonic dynasty, the captivity of 400,000 
French soldiers, and the humiliations of Sedan and Metz, 
was the result. To Prussia and to Germany it wrought 
realization of the enthusiastic dreams of Arndt and of the 
calmer projects of Frederick the Great, Von Stein and Bis- 
marck in the accomplishment of national unity. The blood, 



586 CON-TEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1871. 

which all the German states shed together on the fields of 
France, cemented the bonds of race as nothing else could 
have done. The factious opposition of feudal traditions 
and local jealousies could not longer continue. The Keichs- 
tag in an address to the king of Prussia, presented on 
December 18, 1870, employed these words: ''The North 
German parliament, in unison with the princes of Ger- 
many, approaches with the prayer that your Majesty will 
deign, to consecrate the work of unification by accepting the 
imperial crown of Germany. The Teutonic crown on the 
head of your Majesty will inaugurate for the reestablished 
empire of the German nation an era of honor, of peace, of 
well-being and of liberty secured under the protection of 
the laws." 

The Palace of Versailles is the architectural masterpiece 
and favorite residence of Louis XIV, the arch-enemy of 
the Germans. More than half a century ago it was con- 
verted into an enormous historical picture-gallery and its 
walls were covered with countless splendid paintings rep- 
resenting all the French conquests and triumphs during 
hundreds of years. In the gorgeous throne-room of this 
palace, hung all around with the royal glories of its founder, 
the German Empire was proclaimed on January 18, 1871, 
and the king of Prussia accepted for himself and his de- 
scendants the imperial crown. No coronation at Frankfort 
or Berlin could have been so eloquent and so impressive. 
The shouts of the victorious assemblage, hailing a resur- 
rected and united Germany, announced a new era, and 
woke echoes in the neighboring room where Louis XIV 
had died. 



THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC 587 



VI 

THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC 
(1871-1898) 

The Commune (March 18-May 28, 1871).— A majority 
of the members of the National Assembly, though not vent- 
uring to overthrow the republic, inclined to a monarchical 
form of government. Therefore they were regarded with 
suspicion and even hated by a large section of the Parisian 
populace. The sufferings of the siege, indignation at the 
triumphal entry of the Germans and the exasperation of 
failure had wrought the lower classes to frenzy. It was 
easy for the so-called Central Committee, representing 
every radical and anarchistic notion and strong in the sup- 
port of the dregs of the people, to rouse the mob, unfurl 
the red flag, seize the city and all the fortifications except 
Mount Valerian and proclaim the Commune. Some of the 
still armed national guard rallied to their side. Eager for 
blood, they assassinated General Lecomte and General 
Thomas, who had fought well for France. M. Thiers, the 
government officials, and the members of the Assembly had 
time to withdraw to Versailles. 

Marshal MacMahon, now healed from his wounds, and 
many French prisoners of war had already returned. The 
marshal had the melancholy duty of placing himself at 
their head to put down an insurrection of their fellow-coun- 
trymen. It was necessary to undertake a regular siege and 
bombard the capital. Inside the city any semblance of 
order soon gave way to anarchy, but the insurgents fought 
with ferocity. They butchered Monseigneur Darboy, — the 
third archbishop of Paris who has fallen victim during this 
century to a Parisian mob, — the curate of the Madeleine, 
and the President of the Court of Appeals. In the quarter 
of Belleville they slaughtered sixty-two soldiers and priests 
whom they held as hostages. After the government troops 
had forced their way through the gates, a murderous hand- 



588 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1871-1873. 

to-haud fight in tlie streets continued for seven days before 
resistance was quelled. Maddened by rage at defeat the 
communists sought to destroy all Paris and bury themselves 
in its ashes. The women were more demoniac than the 
men. They succeeded in burning the Hotel de Ville, the 
Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Palace of the Tuileries, 
the Library of the Louvre, and many other public and pri- 
vate buildings. The column of the Place Vendome they 
threw to the ground. The horrified troops showed scant 
mercy to their miserable captives. For a year there were 
court-martials and executions. Thirteen thousand persons 
were transported or condemned to prison for the crimes of 
the Commune. In the wars of 1500 years Paris had never 
suffered as at the hands of her own children in this 
insurrection. 

M. Thiers, President of the Republic (1871-1873).— 
Thus, at the beginning of his presidency had devolved upon 
Thiers two cruel tasks. The one was to make peace with 
a foreign invader gorged with victory. The other was to 
extinguish civil war. 

The sight of an army of occupation wounded the nation 
to the quick. With tireless energy and wonderful skill 
Thiers devoted himself to discharging the war indemnity of 
$1,000,000,000. By September, 1873, it had all been paid, 
not in paper but in hard coin, and the last German soldier 
had recrossed the frontier. The president well deserved 
the title of " Liberator of the Territory," which was decreed 
him in public opinion. 

How long the deputies of the Assembly should hold their 
seats had never been determined, and they governed with- 
out a constitution. Thiers was a liberal monarchist, but 
a patriot above all. He believed that under the circum- 
stances only a republican form of government was possible 
for France. Thereby he incurred the hostility of the 
majority which was made up of legitimists, Orleanists and 
imperialists. These groups were at variance with one 
another and agreed only in antagonism to the republic. 
Some were moved by loyalty to a dynasty; others by the 
dreaded spectre of radicalism and the red flag. On May 23, 
1873, by a test vote of 360 to 344 the Assembly expressed 
its desire that the president should change his policy. The 
old man, whose life of seventy-six years had been conse- 
crated to his country, preferred to resign. 



1 



A.D. 1873-1875.] THE THIRD FRENCn REPUBLIC 589 

Presidency of Marshal MacMahon (1873-1879). — On the 
same day the Assembly elected Marshal MacMahon, Duke 
of Magenta, as his successor. This soldier of the empire 
was supposed to be Orleanist at heart. He was a man 
of upright character, universally esteemed, but cast in 
the mould of a general rather than of a statesman. The 
Orleanist Duke de Broglie was made minister of foreign 
affairs. In the new ministry all the three monarchist 
groups were represented. The republicans were likewise 
split into three sections: the Left Centre or conservative 
republicans; the Left or more advanced republicans; the 
Extreme Left or radicals. The last faction were under the 
control of Gambetta, a natural orator and skilled politician 
who, despite his restless temperament, knew how to tem- 
porize and wait. 

The Kepublic existed de facto, but had never been offi- 
cially decreed. The Orleanists fused with the legitimists 
and consented to proclaim the childless Henry, Count of 
Chambord, as king, the succession to devolve on the Count 
of Paris, the head of the house of Orleans. The vote of the 
Assembly seemed secured for the grandson of Charles X, 
when the monarchist schemes were wrecked on the question 
of the color of a flag. The Count of Chambord refused to 
recognize the tricolor, associated with the Eevolution and 
the empire, and made his acceptance of the throne condi- 
tional upon the restoration of the white flag. Henry IV 
had declared that Paris is worth a mass. His descendant, 
Henry of Chambord, chose to reject a throne rather than 
abandon the symbol of his house. Negotiations could go 
no farther, for the tricolor was interwoven with all th^ 
later life of Prance. The disappointed monarchists to- 
gether with the republican Left Centre voted that the presi- 
dency of Marshal MacMahon should continue for seven 
years (November 20, 1873). Alarmed by the progress of 
imperialisfti, the Assembly, on January 30, 1875, by a 
majority of one recognized the Republic as the definite 
government of France. 

Meanwhile the deputies toiled laboriously at the forma- 
tion of a provisional constitution, which was finally voted 
on February 25, 1875. This constitution was added to or 
modified several times in the course of the year. It pro- 
vided for a Chamber of 733 deputies elected by universal 
suffrage for a term of four years, and for a Senate of 300 



590 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1875-1877. 

members, 225 to be elected by the departments and colonies 
for a term of nine years — seventy-five going out of office 
every three years — and seventy-five by the national assem- 
bly for life. The president of the Republic was to be 
chosen, not by a plebiscite, but by the Senate and Chamber 
of Deputies meeting in joint session. He was to hold office 
for seven years and could be reelected. His power was to 
resemble that of a constitutional sovereign and his ministers 
were responsible to the Chambers. The attributes of the 
two houses were poorly defined, and were sure to be the 
cause of future contention. Distrust of or indifference to 
the will of the people was a marked feature in the elabora- 
tion of the constitution. Thus Versailles, and not Paris, 
was declared the seat of government and legislation. More- 
over, each faction sought to so adjust the provisions as to 
perpetuate itself. The Senate was carefully designed as 
a bulwark of conservatism or an obstructive force. 

The Assembly dissolved in December, 1875. The elec- 
tions gave a strong majority in the Chamber to the repub- 
licans. M. Dufaure became President of the Council, or 
prime minister, with M. Leon Say as minister of finance. 
He was succeeded a few months later by M. Jules Simon, 
an orator and versatile writer as well as accomplished states- 
man. He endeavored to serve the nation rather than a 
party, and to maintain a middle course between the con- 
servatives and the radicals, who daily became more hostile 
to each other. Religious questions intensified the dispute. 
The prime minister satisfied none and alienated all. 

The republican sentiment was daily becoming stronger 
in the country, but Marshal MacMahon was too much 
bound by traditions and of too inflexible a nature to under- 
stand or conform to the march of public opinion. On May 
16, 1877, he brought about the resignation of M. Simon, 
and appointed a monarchist ministry whose principal mem- 
bers were the Orleanist Duke de Broglie and* the impe- 
rialist M. de Fourtou. The Senate was compliant and 
approving, but the refractory Chamber of Deputies was 
prorogued for a month. When it reassembled, by an im- 
mense majority it passed a vote of lack of confidence in the 
ministry. The Senate authorized the dissolution of the 
Chamber, which was at once dissolved. A coup d'etat was 
dreaded, whereby some sort of monarchy should be imposed, 
but the monarchists could not agree upon whose brow to 
place the crown. 



A.D. 1877-1879.] THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC 591 

Then followed all over the country the most genuine 
electoral campaign in which France had ever engaged. The 
government applied all the pressure in its power to deter- 
mine the result. The marshal traversed the country, his 
partisans believing many votes would be influenced by his 
military renown and by the memory of his great services 
under the empire. Gambetta organized the opposition and 
everywhere delivered impassioned and convincing speeches. 
For a time he allowed his radicalism to slumber that he 
might rally under one banner all the anti-monarchists of 
whatever camp. A. practical theorist, he had declared that 
a principle must not be pushed too far and that one must 
make the best of opportunity rather than risk everything 
and so perhaps lose all. For this he was later called an 
opportunist, and the name was applied to those who fol- 
lowed his lead. 

In the heat of the electoral battle Thiers died at St. Ger- 
main. He, more than any other man, had been the 
acknowledged chief of the liberal party. National grati- 
tude conspired with party loyalty to make his funeral the 
occasion of an imposing and overwhelming demonstra- 
tion. 

The republican victory was magnificent. In the new 
Chamber the opponents of the marshal had a majority of 
110, which was further increased by invalidating the elec- 
tions of fifty-two government candidates. They refused to 
vote the budget unless the president chose his cabinet from 
the parliamentary majority. He yielded, and called to the 
ministry MM. Dufaure, Waddington, Marcere, de Frey- 
cinet and Leon Say. 

The following year there was a truce in political strife. 
France and Paris united to further the International Expo- 
sition of 1878, endeavoring to eclipse its brilliant prede- 
cessor of 1867. The seats of seventy-five senators became 
vacant in 1879. The success of the republicans was so 
complete as to assure them henceforth a majority in that 
hitherto conservative body. Marshal MacMahon judged 
his position untenable and resigned the chief magistracy 
(January 30, 1879). 

His presidency was the long crisis in the history of the 
France of to-day. The longer the crisis continued, the more 
definite and stable the result. Since then president. 
Chamber and Senate have been in political accord as to the 



592 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1879-1882. 

system of government. That 16th of May, 1877, when 
M. Simon was dismissed and the Duke de Broglie appointed 
prime minister, was the Sadowa of monarchical restoration 
in France. 

Presidency of M. Grevy (1879-1887). —M. Grevy was at 
once elected president of the Republic. Gambetta suc- 
ceeded him as president of the Chamber of Deputies. Fre- 
quent changes in the ministry followed one another, the 
conservatives growing weaker and the radical tendency 
becoming continually more marked. The death of the 
Prince Imperial in South Africa (June 8, 1880), where he 
had joined a British expedition against the Zulus, blasted 
the rising hopes of the imperialists, who could not agree as 
to who should be regarded as heir of his claims. 

The seat of government was removed from Versailles to 
Paris. The schools and convents of the Jesuits were sup- 
pressed. A special authorization was required for the 
existence of the other religious orders. Public education 
was extended while removed from the hands of the clergy. 
All persons still under condemnation for participation in 
the commune were amnestied. The 14th of July, the an- 
niversary of the capture of the Bastile, was declared a 
national holiday. M. Jules Ferry replaced as prime min- 
ister M. de Freycinet, who was not considered sufficiently 
energetic in enforcing the decrees against the religious 
orders. An expedition to Tunis forced the bey to sign a 
treaty, placing his country under the protectorate of France. 
Gambetta at last became prime minister (November 14, 
1881). Much was expected of him, but his old-time energy 
and fire seemed to have disappeared, xior did he receive 
the support of the Chamber in the measures he proposed. 
After holding office for a little more than two months he 
resigned, and died soon after, never having attained the 
presidency, the goal of his ambition. 

In Egypt complications arose. The khedive had con- 
fided the supervision of the finances to two controllers, 
appointed by Great Britain and France respectively, so as 
to protect the French and British holders of Egyptian bonds. 
Judging the interests of their subjects endangered, the two 
Powers determined to interfere (1882). After much inde- 
cision France refused to cooperate in the military interven- 
tion, which was carried out by Great Britain, and the dual 
control abolished. 



A.D. 1882-1887.] THE THIltD FRENCH REPUBLIC 593 

In Madagascar the Hovas encroached on the privileges of 
certain French residents. The French admiral who com- 
manded the squadron in the Indian Ocean demanded that 
the northwestern part of the island should be placed under 
a French protectorate and a large indemnity be paid (1883). 
The queen of the Hovas refused. Her capital, Tamatave, 
was bombarded, but the French afterwards were signally 
defeated. Finally by treaty it was arranged that adminis- 
tration of internal affairs should be left to the queen, but 
that France should control the foreign relations of the 
island. 

Then followed (1884) an inglorious war with China, in 
consequence of French incursions into territory over which 
the Chinese asserted suzerainty. After terrible loss and 
expense the French were confirmed in the possession of 
Annam and Tonquin. The by no means fruitful expedi- 
tions to Madagascar and China caused the fall of M. Jules 
Ferry (1885), who had been prime minister for twenty-five 
months. In 1885. the constitution was revived and some of 
its conservative features expunged. The Senate was de- 
prived of any right to interfere in the budget, and it was 
determined that henceforth no senator should be elected for 
life. A law was also passed enforcing scrutin de liste, or 
the election of deputies upon a general departmental ticket. 
By the previous system of scrutin d'arrondissement each 
deputy had been elected singly by the vote of the district 
which he represented. 

In the elections of 1885 the radicals and socialists, as 
well as the monarchists, made large gains at the expense 
of the moderate republicans. Thereupon the government 
took stringent measures against the princes of houses 
formerly ruling in France. It was intrusted with discre- 
tionary power to remove them all from the country, and 
was furthermore ordered to expel all claimants of the throne 
and their heirs. Therefore a presidential decree banished 
Prince Napoleon and his son. Prince Victor, and the Count 
of Paris with his son, the Duke of Orleans. The names 
of all the members of the Bonaparte and Orleans families 
were stricken from the army roll. 

On the expiration of his term M. Grevy had been re- 
elected president. His son-in-law, M. Wilson, became im- 
plicated in scandals arising over the sale of decorations 
and of appointments in the army. M. Grevy unwisely 
2q 



594 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1887-1891. 

interfered to protect his son-in-law from justice. Though 
not accused of complicity in the crime, he was forced by 
the indignant Chambers to resign (December 2, 1887). He 
was then eighty years of age. 

Presidency of M. Sadi Carnot (1887-1894). —The choice 
of the Chambers fell upon a worthy and illustrious candi- 
date, M. Sadi Carnot. He was a grandson of that Carnot 
who, in 1793 during the Eevolution, had proved himself 
unequalled as a military organizer and was called by his 
countrymen " the genius of victory." 

The most prominent figure at that time in France was 
G-eneral Boulanger. His theatrical bearing and his sup- 
posed, but unproven, abilities made him a popular idol. 
For insubordination in the army he had been placed upon 
the retired list. A duel, in which he was worsted by a 
civilian, M. Floquet, the prime minister, did not damage 
his prestige. Elected deputy by enormous majorities, first 
in the department of Dordogne, and then in the department 
of Nord, he resigned his seat, but was then triumphantly 
elected on one and the same day in the departments of 
Nord, Charente-Inferieure, and the Somme. His political 
platform of revision of the constitution and dissolution of 
the Chamber enabled him to draw into his following all the 
disaffected and discontented of whatever party or class. 
The government was alarmed at his intrigues and prosecuted 
him before the High Court of Justice. Struck with sudden 
panic he did not present himself for trial, but fled to Great 
Britain. The trial proceeded in his absence. It was proved 
that he had received 3,000,000 francs from the Orleanist 
Duchess d^Uzes to further his political machinations. His 
popularity at once vanished. Finally (September 30, 
1891), he committed suicide on the grave of Madame de 
Bonnemain, who had followed him in his exile and sup- 
ported him by her bounty for two years. 

Despite the fiasco of General Boulanger an urgent de- 
mand continued for a revision of the constitution. The 
revision bill introduced by M. Floquet was received coldly 
in the Chamber, wliereupon he resigned, and M. Tirard, an 
economist, formed a new ministry. Scrutin d'arrondisse- 
ment had previously been restored, tlie government consid- 
ering the scrutin de liste more favorable to the scheme of 
political adventurers. Also a law was passed forbidding a 
citizen to present himself as a candidate for more than one 



A.D. 1890-1892.] THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC 595 

seat in the Chamber. After long debate a new army bill 
was adopted, making three years' service requisite instead 
of five, and compelling students and priests to serve one 
year. 

The ministry of M. Tirard and of his successor, M. de 
Freycinet, devoted special attention to industrial questions. 
The system of free trade which had prevailed in France 
since 1860 was succeeded by high duties on nearly all im- 
ports. A special tariff with far lower rates was drawn up 
to secure reciprocity treaties with foreign countries. 
Great discontent prevailed among the working classes. 
The annual May-day labor demonstrations had become a 
menace to law and order. Frequent strikes produced armed 
conflicts between the soldiers and the mob. To appease 
the agitation the government founded a Labor Bureau and 
introduced bills for the protection of women and children 
in the factories. 

So far the Catholic Church and the Republic had been 
generally regarded as hostile to each other. This feeling 
was an injury to both. In 1890 an illustrious prelate. 
Cardinal Lavigerie, archbishop of Algiers, published a 
letter, declaring it the true policy of the Catholic Church 
to support the Republic. At once the cardinal was bitterly 
denounced by the reactionary section of his coreligionists, 
but his policy was warmly commended by Pope Leo XIII. 
In consequence there have been far more amicable relations 
between the church and state, and the prevailing system 
has received the adhesion of many who had formerly 
opposed it. 

In 1892 France was convulsed by the Panama scandal. 
Twelve years before M. de Lesseps, to whom the Suez Canal 
was due, organized the Panama Canal Company to construct 
a ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama. His immense 
reputation was supposed to guarantee success. Shares were 
eagerly subscribed for, especially by the laboring classes, 
and the government also advanced large loans. In 1889, 
after $280,000,000 had been expended and small progress 
made, the company dissolved. Thousands of subscribers 
were ruined. The government prosecuted the directors for 
misappropriation of funds and for bribery of public officials. 
M. Ba'ihaut, minister of public works in 1886, was proved 
to have received 375,000 francs, though he demanded 
1,000,000. Other deputies and state officers were convicted 



596 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 189^-1894. 

and sentenced. M. de Lesseps himself, though on his 
death-bed, was condemned to five years' imprisonment and 
to pay a fine of 5000 francs. During the investigation one 
cabinet toppled after another. In April, 1893, as the storm 
abated, M. Dupuy formed a ministry. While the French 
were punishing civilized criminals at home, they were car- 
rying on a tedious war in Africa against the barbarous king 
of Dahomey. Finally, his capital, Ahomey, was taken, 
and in 1894 his territories made a French protectorate. 

The elections of 1893 revealed the marked progress of 
socialism, and a corresponding decrease of conservatism 
among the voters. When M. Dupuy proposed an anti- 
socialistic programme to the newly elected Chamber, he 
could not obtain a vote of confidence, M. Casimir-Perier 
was invited to form a cabinet. Anarchism seemed to ter- 
rorize Paris and France. Many magistrates were attacked. 
In the Chamber of Deputies an anarchist, not a member, 
hurled a bomb at the president. Though laws were enacted 
against the propagation of anarchistic doctrines, "there 
was an epidemic of bombs in Paris in the spring of 1894." 

On June 24, 1894, President Carnot paid a formal visit to 
Lyons. As he rode through the streets an Italian rushed 
before him and stabbed him, shouting, " Long live anarchy ! " 
The illustrious victim died that same night. 

He was universally mourned. His dignified and courtly 
manners, no less than his spotless character, had com- 
manded the admiration of his countrymen. The perfection 
of address, with which he had met the Assembly at Ver- 
sailles on May 5, 1889, the hundredth anniversary of the 
convocation of the States General, and had inaugurated the 
International Exposition at Paris the following day, indi- 
cated the ideal of a French chief magistrate. But it was as 
a statesman-president, lifted above the burning but puerile 
contentions of party politics, that he enhanced the reputa- 
tion of the French Kepublic and won the respect of the 
world. 

Presidency of M. Casimir-Perier (1894). — M. Casimir- 
Perier, the candidate of the moderate republicans, was 
elected by the Senate and Chamber three days after the 
assassination of M. Carnot. But he was passionately 
hated by the socialists and radicals, who employed every 
weapon to break down his authority. Corruption in con- 
nection with certain railway franchises was proved against 



A.D. 1895-1897.] THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC 597 

some of his friends, and this compelled the Cabinet to 
retire. Finding it difficult to form a new ministry and dis- 
heartened by sudden unpopularity, M. Casimir-Perier 
resigned the presidency. 

Presidency of M. Faure (1895- ). — The three candi- 
dates were M. Brisson, President of the Chamber, M. Wal- 
deck-Rousseau and M. Felix Faure. The latter was elected 
(January 17). His occupancy of the chair has been marked 
by shrewdness and tact. During a tour through southeast- 
ern France in 1897 his democratic ways and close attention 
to whatever had to do with the army increased his popu- 
larity. An intimate alliance with Russia has of late years 
been greatly desired by the French, who regarded them- 
selves as otherwise politically isolated in Europe. They 
were much gratified, when at the opening of the Baltic 
Canal in 1895, the Eussian and French fleets in company 
entered the harbor of Kiel and when General Dragomanoff 
and the Russian ambassador attended the manoeuvres of 
five army corps, numbering more than 120,000 men, in 
eastern France. Enthusiasm reached its limit on October 
5, 1896, when the Tsar and Tsarina reviewed the French 
fleet off Cherbourg. Afterwards their majesties visited 
Paris, and the capital abandoned itself to festivities for 
three days. In August, 1897, President Faure returned 
the visit of his imperial guests, and was magnificently 
entertained. Afterwards he received such an ovation in 
France as is rarely extended a conqueror. 

His first prime minister, M. Ribot, was replaced (Octo- 
ber 30, 1895) by M. Bourgeois, and France had for the first 
time a cabinet composed wholly of radicals. Then the 
newspaper, La France, raked over again the embers of the 
Panama scandal, publishing the names of 104 members of 
the Chamber belonging to different parties, who, it asserted, 
had received bribes from the Panama Canal Company. 
There was a furious stir and further investigation was 
ordered, but little came of it. Another scandal, as to the 
concession of phosphate lands in Algeria, also made much 
noise. The socialists in the two Houses and all over the 
country redoubled their activity. They determined, on 
the anniversary of the death of the communist Blanqui, to 
make a demonstration at his grave in the cemetery of Pere 
la Chaise, but it was broken up by the i^olice and their red 
flags confiscated. For months the Senate and House were 



598 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1894-1898. 

at variance over questions of taxation, over the appropria- 
tion for the International Exposition of 1900 and the policy 
of the government in Madagascar. M. Bourgeois gave way 
to M. Meline as prime minister, who formed the thirty- 
fourth cabinet which had administered affairs since the 
resignation of M. Thiers in 1873. 

During the last two years much progress has been made 
in reconciling moderate republicanism and the Catholic 
Church. On the other hand, the antagonism to the JeVs 
has permeated almost all classes. The socialists started 
the movement, denouncing them as holders of property; 
but the aversion now shown them in France is based upon 
religion and race. The Dreyfus case furnishes a deplorable 
example. Captain Dreyfus, one of the few Jewish officers 
in the army, was arrested in 1894 on a charge of selling 
military plans to foreigners. He was tried by secret court- 
martial. Incriminatory documents were shown the judges, 
which neither he nor his counsel was permitted to see. 
He was declared guilty and sentenced to transportation for 
life. It is commonly believed that he was denied a fair 
trial because a Jew, and that on a fair trial his innocence 
would be made clear. When the famous novelist Zola 
made an effort to have the facts brought out, every obstacle 
was put in the way by the populace and courts. M. Zola 
was twice brought to trial on charge of libelling the gov- 
ernment. Though he was twice condemned, the agitation 
increased rather than diminished. 

The question took on an international phase. The Ger- 
man government had been accused of complicity in the sup- 
posed revelations of Captain Dreyfus. It branded these 
accusations as falsehoods and demanded that they be offi- 
cially withdrawn. Careful investigation (August, 1898) 
proved the truth of the German statement and made evi- 
dent that at least a portion of the papers employed to 
convict Captain Dreyfus w^ere forgeries. The chief of the 
French intelligence bureau confessed a Share in these for- 
geries and committed suicide. The chief of the staff. Gen- 
eral Boisdeffre, and some of the highest officials resigned. 
The government now faces a terrible dilemma. If it re- 
vises the trial of Captain Dreyfus and his innocence is 
demonstrated, popular confidence in the management of the 
army will be shaken and perhaps destroyed. If it does not 



A.D. 1898.] THE THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC 599 

revise that trial, it rests under the imputation of denying 
opportunity for justice to a cruelly accused man. 

France in 1898. — The Third French Republic is now 
completing its twenty-eighth year. It has thus already 
lasted longer than any other form of government — empire, 
absolute or limited monarchy — which has arisen in France 
since 1789. Though differing in many respects, both as 
to theory and practice, from American ideas of republican- 
ism, it nevertheless appears to be the system most appro- 
priate to the genius of French character and most acceptable 
to the French people. The French have not long centuries 
of self-government behind them, and for generations a 
French republic must be a trial of experiments. This 
Eepublic has reorganized an effete and shattered military 
system and has rendered the French army to-day one of the 
most powerful militant forces in Europe. It has reorgan- 
ized a defective system of instruction and developed and 
popularized both lower and higher education. Though 
attended more than once with corruption and scandal in 
high places, it has surpassed both the empire and the mon- 
archy in official purity and honesty, and under it the public 
conscience has become more enlightened and hence more 
sensitive. 

At the same time in few preceding periods of twenty-eight 
years has French influence counted so little among the 
nations. The Franco-Prussian War left France politically 
effaced. Her ablest foreign ministers, like M. Hanotaux, 
when dealing with the Armenian, Cretan and Greek ques- 
tions, have been able to do nothing more than follow in 
the wake of the great Powers. 

Since 1824 every French ruler — Charles X, Louis Phi- 
lippe, Napoleon III, Thiers, MacMahon, Grevy, Carnot, 
Casimir-Perier — has been driven from his place by revolu- 
tion or assassination or the overwhelming force of hostile 
public opinion. It may be so eventually with M. Faure. 
But, while his three and a half years of presidency offer little 
as yet of permanent interest or importance, he certainly 
has consolidated the Republic and brought Frenchmen nearer 
each other. 



600 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY 



VII 

THE GERMAN EMPIRE 

(1871-1898) 

The Imperial Constitution. — The Constitution was pro- 
mulgated on April 16, 1871, in the name of the king of 
Prussia, as head of the North German Confederation, of 
the kings of Bavaria and Wiirtemberg and the Grand Dukes 
of Baden and Hesse. It was thus granted by five accordant 
princes and not wrought out in a constitutional assembly. 
It formed the code of twenty-six distinct states now all 
united under the iron rule of the Hohenzollerns and sub- 
mitted to the same rigid discipline in war and diplomacy. 
Surfeited with such military glory as has been seldom 
achieved, the Germans, content for a time to forget their 
old aspirations after liberty, hailed the new system with 
transport. Hitherto one had been a Prussian, Bavarian, 
Hessian subject. Now the local name was obscured by the 
larger title of German subject. A man's civil rights were 
no longer local, but equal and similar all over the empire. 
The former German Empire was centrifugal, each emperor 
being chosen by election and each state retaining its feudal 
laws. The modern German Empire is centripetal, heredity 
in the Prussian house transmitting the succession with the 
precision of a well-oiled machine, and the imperial Constitu- 
tion paramount to all customs and enactments of the various 
states. The former Empire of Germany was a vague politi- 
cal expression. The modern German Empire is a definite 
political fact. 

The legislative authority was exercised by a Bundesrath 
or Federal Council, composed of representatives of the vas- 
sal princes of the empire, and by a Keichstag, or Imperial 
Diet, composed of deputies elected by the people. There 
was one deputy for each 100,000 inhabitants, and he held 
his seat three years. In the Federal Council Prussia had 
only seventeen votes out of fifty-eight. The consent of 



A.D. 1871-1876.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 601 

the Bundesrath was necessary to declare war, except in case 
of the territory being suddenly invaded. Whenever one- 
third of its members desired, it was to be convoked in 
special session. All foreign policy was to be directed by 
the imperial chancellor. Berlin was in general the centre 
of imperial government and legislation, but the seat of the 
Imperial Tribunal was at Leipzig, and the accountant-gen- 
eral's office at Potsdam. The army on a peace footing 
numbered more than 400,000 men. Its military organiza- 
tion, in awful efficiency hitherto unapproached in human 
history, enabled it in case of war to put into the field 
1,456,677 men, perfectly disciplined and equipped. 

The Alliance of the Three Emperors (1871-1876).— All 
Europe might well be alarmed for its own safety after the 
victories and consolidation of Germany. There was no 
continental power, except Kussia, which was not certain to 
go down before the new state in case of war. Not only 
smaller neighboring states but France herself trembled 
before the armed colossus which had arisen among them. 
Austria had nothing to hope except by peace. She mani- 
fested a strong desire to be on amicable terms with the new 
Power which had thrust her out of Germany. The Tsar 
Alexander II, a man of peace, was the friend and admirer 
of the Emperor William. The three emperors, Alex- 
ander II, William I and Francis Joseph drew together in a 
friendly understanding, which is called the Alliance of the 
Three Emperors. It was only when Russia drew her sword 
in 1877 to rescue her coreligionists, tlie Bulgarians, from 
further outrages at the hands of the Ottomans, that this 
friendly understanding was disturbed. It is to be said 
however that imperial Germany, while prepared for any 
eventuality, has attacked none and has pursued a policy of 
peace with all. 

Org^anization of Alsace-Lorraine (1871). — The inhabitants 
of the annexed territory, though German in origin, were 
intensely French in sentiment. With indescribable sorrow 
they saw themselves transferred to Germany. Many emi- 
grated rather than submit to foreign domination, and a large 
number abandoned their homes and removed to France. 
Alsace and Lorraine were at first governed as an imperial 
province under military dictatorship and dependent upon 
the imperial chancellor. Allowed representation in the 
Eeichstag in 1874, their fifteen deputies unitedly and 



602 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1873-1887. 

boldly protested against their annexation by force and 
then solemnly withdrew. Bismarck believed that by 
shrewdly permitting them a degree of home rule their op- 
position might be gradually undermined. They were 
granted a Provincial Committee to sit at Strasburg and 
discuss all bills, which were afterwards submitted to the 
Reichstag, concerning their domestic and fiscal affairs. 
Gradually the functions of this committee were enlarged. 
In 1879 the government of the province was removed from 
the direction of the chancellor and intrusted to a statthalter 
or imperial envoy to reside at Strasburg. Marshal Man- 
teuffel, a distinguished soldier and statesman, was appointed 
to the position. By mild and conciliatory measures he did 
his utmost to reconcile the people, but in vain. Their 
aversion was only the more openly expressed. Then fol- 
lowed a policy of violent repression. The chancellor, 
Caprivi, declared in 1890 that the attempt to foster German 
feeling having failed, nothing was left but to dig deeper 
the ditch which separated Alsace-Lorraine from France. 
Though powerless to resist, the Alsace-Lorrainers have 
become no less sullen and determined in their anti-German 
sentiments. 

The Culturkampf (1873-1887). — Bismarck, now a prince 
and chancellor of the empire, had met nothing but success. 
In the Culturkampf, or civilization fight, he undertook a 
task beyond his powers, in which he was to encounter his 
great political defeat. He had unified Germany by merg- 
ing it under one central power. The Catholic Church in 
Prussia, as well as all other churches, must pass through 
the same process of centralization and be merged in and 
made subordinate to the state. In 1873 the Prussian min- 
ister of public worship. Dr. Falk, introduced and succeeded 
in passing the so-called Falk or May Laws. Ostensibly 
these laws aimed at securing liberty to the laity, a national 
and German rather than an ultramontane training to the 
clergy and protection for the inferior clergy against their 
superiors. They provided that all theological seminaries 
should be controlled by the state, that the state should 
examine all candidates for the priesthood and should fur- 
thermore have the right to approve or reject all ecclesias- 
tical appointments. Pope Pius IX remonstrated in an 
urgent letter to the emperor. The Catholic bishops collec- 
tively declared they could not obey these laws. But they 



A.D. 1878-1890.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 603 

were none the less vigorously enforced by fine, imprison- 
ments and exile. It was religious persecution on an enor- 
mous scale in the latter half of the nineteenth century. 
Within eight years' time the parishes of more than one-fifth 
of the 8500 Catholic priests in Prussia were vacant, and no 
successors could be appointed. The perfect union of the 
Catholic clergy and laity with no weapon but passive resist- 
ance won the victory in the end. The May Laws were sus- 
pended in 1881 and later on practically repealed. After 1887 
all state interference in the administration of the church 
and in the education of the priesthood was wholly abandoned. 

Economic Policy (1878-1890). — Up to 1848 the Zollver- 
ein had favored a protective policy. Afterwards in the 
sixties had followed a system of reciprocity treaties with 
France, Austria, Great Britain, Italy and other countries 
showing a marked tendency toward free trade. The national 
liberals advocated abolition of all duties on raw materials, 
a policy supposed to enjoy the approval of Prince Bismarck. 
But in December, 1878, the chancellor sent a communica- 
tion to the Federal Council, wherein he condemned the 
existing policy and advocated higher rates as a means to 
increase the revenues of the state. His will was law. A 
new tariff was introduced and passed. It placed heavy 
duties on raw materials and considerably increased the 
duties on textile goods and other articles already taxed. 
Subsequently, until his fall in 1890, the tariff was forced 
higher and higher. 

The Triple Alliance (1879- ). — Only the principal 
facts and not all the details are known in reference to the 
triple alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy. Austria, 
after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, whereby she 
had secured Hertzegovina and Bosnia, was uneasy on the 
Russian frontier. Neither Austria nor Russia was likely 
to forget the part the former had played in the Crimean 
War. So she concluded a secret treaty with Germany in 
1879, "an alliance for peace and mutual defence," in case 
either Power should be attacked by Russia or by some state 
supported by Russia. Italy, without reason to dread attack, 
but probably desirous of imperial fellowship and recog- 
nition, asked to be admitted to this alliance. Meanwhile, 
from 1887 to 1890 another secret treaty existed between 
Germany and Russia which only became known to the world 
by the revelations of Bismarck in 1896. 



604 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1888-1898. 

Death of Emperor William I (March 9, 1888). —The ab- 
solutist policy, with which he began his reign as king of 
Prussia, had been maintained by him as German emperor 
and won a magnificent success. The astounding growth of 
the socialist party was demonstration against a principle 
rather than against a man. The appreciation of his great 
achievements had made the sovereign, who was hated and 
hooted at the beginning of his reign, the idol of his people 
at the end. His simple and homely ways, his blunt sol- 
dierly bearing and his chivalric devotion to his mother's 
memory won the hearts even of those Germans who were 
the most hostile to his political principles. His death at 
the age of ninety-one was received with a consternation 
of grief. Though Bismarck and Moltke outlived him, it 
was an anxious question in the minds of many whether the 
imperial fabric he had built up would survive his departure. 

Frederick I (1888). — The Crown Prince Frederick suc- 
ceeded. He had made a splendid record as a soldier in the 
Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars. On several 
occasions he had shown liberal tendencies, which his mar- 
riage with Victoria, crown princess of Great Britain and 
eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, was supposed to fortify. 
He had even protested against the Army bill of 1862 and 
given public expression of his dissent from a subsequent 
despotic action of the government. But a fatal throat dis- 
ease had fastened upon him before his accession. It was 
only as a doomed and speechless invalid that he occupied 
the throne. His three months' reign is memorable for his 
spirit of self-forgetfulness and devotion to duty. 

Reign of William II (1888- ).— William II was 
twenty-nine years old when he became emperor. His first 
proclamation was addressed to the army and navy, and he 
has manifested ever since an almost passionate interest in 
these branches of the public service. His speech on open- 
ing the Reichstag, as well as his first address to the German 
people, indicated his absolutist policy. Louis XIV him- 
self was in the seventeenth century not a more convinced 
impersonification of the divine right of kings. "The 
supreme guardian of law and order," he regards himself as 
crowned by God, as the anointed elector of the divine will, 
and as entitled to the unquestioning obedience of his sub- 
jects. A wonderful activity or restlessness has been the 
most prominent characteristic of his reign. No other 



A.D. 1888-1898.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 605 

European sovereign has been such a constant traveller to 
foreign lands. No other European sovereign has so inter- 
fered not only in all branches of administration, but in all 
matters relating to public, social and religious life. A 
ready speaker, there is hardly a topic left untouched in his 
speeches, and his speeches have been delivered on all occa- 
sions. Always the dominant sentiment, whatever the 
theme, is the doctrine of autocracy. 

The first year of his reign was marked by an event of 
historic significance. In October, 1888, the free cities of 
Hamburg and Bremen, whose right to remain free ports had 
been ratified in the imperial constitution of 1871, renounced 
their special and ancient privileges and completely merged 
themselves in the common Fatherland. Great pomp at- 
tended the ceremony. The emperor came in person to 
accept their patriotic sacrifice. Except that their sover- 
eignty was represented in the Bundesrath by the side of 
that of princes, the last vestige of the Hanseatic League 
had disappeared. 

Between the veteran chancellor, who had controlled the 
helm for almost a generation, and the youthful emperor, 
eager to exercise his power, there was sure to be friction. 
The temper of Bismarck, by no means pliable, had not 
softened with success and age. The chief of the staff, the 
Count of Waldersee, and other courtiers fostered the grow- 
ing alienation. The chancellor persisted in a bill which 
the emperor disapproved. The emperor issued a decree in 
a sense which the chancellor had always opposed. The 
chancellor refused to repeat a certain conversation, although 
urged to do so by the emperor. On March 17, 1890, came 
a message from the emperor that he was waiting for the 
chancellor's resignation. The chancellor refused to resign. 
Then followed a direct order demanding his resignation. 
Bismarck in his fall did not manifest the self-control he had 
shown in his powerful days, and filled Germany with his 
complaints. It was his mistake to believe himself still 
essential to the state, when his work had been long since 
done. Yet the emperor might have dealt more gentl}^ with 
the old man, to whom the empire owed its existence and 
to whom he himself was indebted for his imperial crown. 
In 1894 the sovereign and the subject were publicly recon- 
ciled amid universal rejoicing, and the latter received an 
ovation from all classes at Berlin. Afterwards he exercised 



606 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1898. 

no farther influence upon affairs, but quietly resided at his 
castle of Friedrichsruhe until his death (July 30, 1898). 

A work of immense utility was officially inaugurated in 
1891. This was the Baltic Canal. Beginning at Holtenau 
on the Bay of Kiel, it joins the Elbe fifteen miles from its 
mouth. Although sixty-one miles in length it requires no 
locks. By means of this stupendous achievement the Ger- 
man navy can pass from the Baltic through German terri- 
tory to the North Sea, and is no longer compelled to make 
the tortuous and dangerous voyage among the Danish islands 
and through the Cattegat and Skager Rack. 

Since 1871 the empire has engaged in no foreign war. 
But not for a moment has been relaxed the policy which 
renders Germany, and hence all Europe, a camp of soldiers 
and which secures only the anxieties and uncertainties of 
an armed peace. Because of her strategic position and the 
acknowledged efficiency of her troops, until Germany dis- 
arms, none of the other great Powers can afford to do so. 
In December, 1897, her standing army on a peace establish- 
ment comprised 607,000 men. Thus the most vigorous of 
her population were withdrawn from the ranks of producers. 
As yet she only begins to show the inevitably destructive 
consequences of an unnatural militarism. The increase of 
socialism, which does not so much menace the state as its 
prevailing military and political system, here finds its 
cause. German socialism is the appalling protest against 
inequality and government by the sword. Under Wil- 
liam I, Bismarck endeavored to prevent its expansion by 
restrictive laws and employment of force. William II has 
been slightly more sagacious because more mild in dealing 
with it. But all measures to suppress it must be abortive 
as long as the chief causes remain. In 1872 there were 
but two socialists in the Reichstag. There were forty-four 
in 1893 and in 1898 fifty-four. These figures give an unfair 
indication of their strength, inasmuch as in the cities is 
the hotbed of socialism, and the cities have a smaller num- 
ber of deputies in proportion to population than do the rural 
districts. In 1874 the socialists polled only 340,000 votes. 
In 1890 they polled 1,427,000; in 1893, 1,786,000; and in 
1898, 2,120,000. No other political party could muster 
so many adherents. The future of Germany is the gravest 
problem now confronting Europe. 




. Ul.inar, 4- Cu.. N. V. 



ITALY 607 



VIII 

ITALY 

Condition of the Italian Peninsula in 1850. — The present 
of Italy was never darker and her outlook upon the future 
more discouraging than in the summer of 1850. The revo- 
lutionary war of 1848, that had swept over the country from 
the lagoons of Venice to the extremities of Sicily, had re- 
ceded, and left nothing but defeat and disappointment 
behind. 

Italy at that time comprised the Kingdom of the Two 
Sicilies, the States of the Church, the grand duchy of Tus- 
cany, the duchies of Parma and Modena, the Lombardo- 
Venetian territory and the kingdom of Piedmont or Sardinia. 
In the Two Sicilies Ferdinand II, no longer dreading popu- 
lar outbreak, had suspended the constitution which he had 
granted, and from his palace in Naples worked his brutal 
and bloody will without check or hindrance. In the States 
of the Church, stretching in irregular diagonal across Italy 
from the Tuscan Sea to the mouths of the Po, Pope Pius 
IX threw the influence of his exalted office on the side of 
despotism. Under the influence of Cardinal Antonelli and 
the protection of French bayonets he ruled as tyrannically 
as any temporal prince. In Tuscany the Archduke Leo- 
pold II, himself the grandson of an Austrian emperor, 
turned his back upon his brief compromise with the par- 
tisans of reform and maintained an Austrian garrison in 
Florence. In Parma and Modena Charles III and the cruel 
Francis V, by the aid of Austrian troops, restored an abso- 
lute government and terrorized over opposition. Lombardy 
and Venetia, placed under martial law, were governed from 
the fortress of Verona by the merciless Radetzki and Hay- 
nau, the "hyena of Brescia." 

The only exception to the universal darkness was found 
in Piedmont. In that tiny country of 4,000,000 inhab- 
itants, the '^Fundamental Statute," a sort of charter, was 
still in force. It possessed a dynasty of its own and a 



608 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1850-1856. 

national flag and a national army. Though defeated, it had 
in two campaigns dared to resist Austria. But the heroic 
Charles Albert, by failure, had been forced to abdicate and 
die in exile, leaving his throne to his son, Victor Emmanuel. 
The young king had borne himself bravely at the battle of 
Novara. But his queen was an Austrian archduchess, he 
was unpopular with his subjects and his abilities were a 
matter of doubt. There was little cohesion or sympathy 
between the four territories making the kingdom of Pied- 
mont or Sardinia. These were Piedmont proper, buttressed 
against the Alps and inhabited by a brave and simple people ; 
southern Liguria, with Genoa, a republican centre, ill dis- 
posed to the dynasty; Savoy, on the western slope of the 
Alps, French in language and sentiment; and the island of 
Sardinia, which remained apart from the life of Europe. 
Yet in this sparsely populated, ill-connected country the 
expulsion of the Austrians and the political unification of 
the peninsula were preparing. 

Count Cavour. — In every other respect no two men are 
more dissimilar than Prince Bismarck and Count Cavour, 
but they parallel each other in the main purpose of their 
lives and the magnificence of its accomplishment. Cavour 
is the Italian Bismarck. Unlike his German prototyjje he 
did not live to see his work complete, but he set in motion 
those forces which were to expel Austria from Italy as Bis- 
marck expelled her from Germany, and to place on the map 
a kingdom of Italy as Bismarck placed there a German Em- 
pire. Himself a less spectacular figure and moving in a 
more contracted arena, he does not so centre the gaze of 
mankind. Yet no other statesman of contemporary times 
is equally worthy to be placed next to the great German. 

By birth an aristocrat, always a monarchist, a Catholic 
but a moderate, Cavour was detested by the extremists of 
all parties. Prime minister in 1852, he welcomed to Pied- 
mont the political exiles from all over Italy, and thus early 
caused it to be understood that in his little country was the 
only refuge of Italian patriotism and liberty. 

Piedmont in the Crimean War (1855-1856). — When the 
Crimean War broke out, Cavour determined that Piedmont 
should actively participate in the conflict. Great Britain, 
in need of troops, proposed to subsidize the Piedmontese. 
Cavour offered to enter the Franco-British alliance, not as 
a mercenary, but as an equal. His proposal to maintain 



A. D. 1856-1859.] ITALY- 609 

an army of 15,000 men in the Crimea as long as the war 
lasted was gladly accepted. He more than kept his word. 
At the decisive battle of Tchernaya the discipline of his 
countrymen and the accuracy of their aim provoked admi- 
ration. The timid and hesitating course of Austria during 
the war had exasperated France and Great Britain. When 
at the Congress of Paris Cavour, as representative of Pied- 
mont, skilfully drew the attention of the plenipotentiaries 
bo the evils of Austrian rule in Italy and the deplorable 
state of the peninsula, his words fell upon sympathetic ears. 
Thus the Italian question was definitely posed. It could 
not be henceforth forgotten till it received definite solution. 

The War of 1859. — At first Cavour had counted on the 
active assistance of Great Britain. Disappointed in his 
hopes, he made overtures to l^apoleon. In his secret inter- 
view with Napoleon at Plombieres (July, 1858), the con- 
ditions and terms of alliance between France and Piedmont 
were verbally agreed upon. In April, 1859, Austria made 
the diplomatic blunder of taking the aggressive and forcing 
on the war. Victor Emmanuel appealed to his compatriots 
of the centre and south. For years secret societies had ex- 
isted over Italy, united under the mystic symbol, Verdi, 
the initials of the words Vittorio Emmanuele Re d'ltalia. 
The French and Piedmontese victories of Montebello and 
Magenta inspired them to courage and action. Popular 
risings in Tuscany, Parma and Modena drove out the dukes. 
The E-omagna, the papal territories along the Adriatic, like- 
wise took fire and the papal officials were expelled. The 
overwhelming victory of Solferino was followed by the 
sudden peace of Villafranca, agreed upon by Napoleon and 
Francis Joseph. This treaty seemed to shatter all the 
hopes of Italian union and independence. 

By its terms Lombardy was to be united to Piedmont, 
and Venetia, still under the rule of Austria, was to be made 
part of an Italian federation under the presidency of the 
Pope. This petty gain was trivial compared with what 
Cavour and the Italians had hoped. The Dukes of Tuscany 
and Modena were to return to their states. The formidable 
quadrilateral — Peschiera, Mantua, Verona and Legnago — 
was retained by Austria. Victor Emmanuel could do noth- 
ing but accept the hard conditions as far as he himself and 
his country were concerned, but he would promise nothing 
farther. Cavour was broken-hearted. Utterly losing his 
2r 



610 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1859-1860. 

self-control, in a bitter two hours' interview, lie over- 
whelmed his sovereign with reproaches and withdrew from 
the ministry. The definite treaty of Zurich (November 10) 
confirmed the decisions of Villafranca. 

Successful Revolutions. Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi 
(1859-1865). — The king took possession of Lombardy. 
For the banished dukes to regain their duchies was more 
diflfi-cult. In August the assemblies of Parma, Modena and 
Tuscany declared that their former rulers had forfeited all 
their rights, demanded annexation to Piedmont and recog- 
nized Victor Emmanuel as their sovereign. The Eomagna 
did the same. Plebiscites by almost unanimous votes con- 
firmed these acts. The son of Charles Albert had become 
king of 11,000,000 people. In January, 1860, Cavour again 
became prime minister. 

In Kaples Francis II had succeeded his father, Ferdi- 
nand II of evil memory. Deaf to the counsels of the 
French and British cabinets, he resolved to continue the 
same policy. All Sicily rebelled. Because of diplomatic 
pressure from abroad, the astute Cavour could not interfere 
or accept the propositions of the revolutionist Mazzini, but 
he could allow others to act. Garibaldi, with 1000 resolute 
men, hurried from Genoa (May 5, 1860) and landed at 
Marsala in Sicily. He was not a statesman, hardly a gen- 
eral, but only a hero who rushed on in his red shirt sure 
that others would follow and careless whether they did or 
not. In three days he stormed Palermo. The battle of 
Milazzo gave him Messina and the whole island (July 20). 
He crossed the strait and marched on Naples. Francis II 
fled from his capital (September 6). The next day Gari- 
baldi entered Naples without opposition and was hailed as 
a liberator. He was at once accepted as dictator of the 
Two Sicilies. 

But the tempestuous success of the revolution was a 
danger and menace to Cavour. Mazzini, the republicans of 
the south and even Garibaldi had no love for the house of 
Piedmont. They might easily become its foes. Mean- 
while the courts of Europe held Cavour responsible for the 
whirlwind that was unloosed. The government of every 
European state was unfriendly or openly hostile. The 
storm that had swept Sicily and Naples was ready to burst 
on Rome ; but Eome was garrisoned by French troops and 
behind them was the threatening form of Napoleon. A 



I 



A.D. 1860-1861.] ITALY 611 

single false step on the part of Cavour might ruin all that 
Italy and Piedmont had gained in twelve anxious years. 
Indecision was fatal. Should Cavour yield to the conserva- 
tive warnings of Europe, or should he now without reserve 
head the party of action? There could be no compromise 
with Garibaldi, who was resolved to proclaim Italian inde- 
pendence from the top of the Quirinal. 

The prime minister invited the Pope to disband his 
foreign army. When Pius IX refused, he ordered the Pied- 
montese generals to invade the papal states and rescue them 
from despotism and anarchy. After a brave defence by the 
French general, De Lamoriciere, all the still remaining 
papal territory on the Adriatic was in the hands of the 
Piedmontese, but the eternal city was left to the Pope. In 
a calm and sagacious speech, delivered before the Parlia- 
ment, but really addressed to the bar of Europe, Cavour 
declared that he submitted the question of Kome and 
Venetia to the arbitrament of time. Francis II still re- 
sisted feebly, but obstinately. He then retained only a 
Sicilian citadel and the fortress of Gaeta. A plebiscite in 
the Two Sicilies and in the papal states of Umbria and the 
Marches by an almost unanimous vote declared for union 
with emancipated Italy and for Victor Emmanuel as king. 

The monarch and the dictator held their formal but 
simple first interview near Teano (October 26). The Pied- 
montese troops and the Garibaldian volunteers threw them- 
selves into each other's arms. Victor Emmanuel and 
Garibaldi galloped to meet each other. As they embraced, 
the armies shouted, " Long live Victor Emmanuel ! " leav- 
ing it for Garibaldi to add, " king of Italy ! " 

All the Italian provinces, except Venetia and the papal 
territory on the Tuscan Sea, were now united under one 
flag. The tricolor of green, white and red sheltered them 
all. On February 18, 1861, the first national parliament 
assembled at Turin to enact laws for a people of 22,000,000 
souls. Then (June 6) Cavour died, worn out by labor and 
success. He was succeeded by Baron Ricasoli, whom Si- 
gnor Ratazzi soon replaced. The Roman question was keep- 
ing the kingdom in a ferment. Garibaldi resolved to settle 
it with the sword. Refusing to submit to the orders of the 
government, with a band of Sicilian volunteers he marched 
northward through Calabria. Encountered by the royal 
troops at Aspromonte, his followers were dispersed and he 



612 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1865-1870. 

himself was wounded and made a prisoner. The ignomini- 
ous necessity of firing upon the liberator forced the Ratazzi 
ministry from office. In the autumn of 1865 the capital 
was removed from Turin to Florence. 

Alliance with Prussia against Austria (1866). — This alli- 
ance was equally advantageous to Prussia and Italy. 
Thereby Austria was comjjelled to divide her forces and 
despatch to the southwest generals and troops sorely needed 
on her northern frontier. Italy lost rather than gained in 
military reputation by the reverses of General La Marmora 
and Admiral Persano at Custozza and Lissa. None the 
less her assistance had inclined the scale to the side of 
Prussia. She well deserved her reward in the acquisition 
of Venetia. Another almost unanimous plebiscite and 
Victor Emmanuel, on November 7, entered the city of the 
doges as its king. 

Rome the Capital of Italy (1870). — The Italian heart 
was always turning to Rome. In 1866 Napoleon, accord- 
ing to his promise, withdrew the French garrison, but the 
Italian government was not free to interfere in the still re- 
maining papal possessions. Garibaldi could not curb his 
impatience. A third time he marched an army upon 
Roman territory. In deference to the clerical party in 
France, Napoleon sent an expedition to support the Pope 
and Garibaldi was defeated at the battle of Mentana. The 
French prime minister, Rouher, formally declared, " Italy 
shall never enter Rome." 

Again protected by French soldiers, the Pope felt himself 
secure, and assembled the Ecumenical Council (1869). 
Soon came upon France the disasters of the Franco-Prussian 
war, and she was forced to recall every arm on which she 
could rely. Her troops quitted Rome. The king, with 
earnest tenderness, implored the Pope to recognize the in- 
evitable trend of events, and, while relinquishing his tem- 
poral sovereignty, to resign himself to that independent 
and exalted position which the Italians desired him to 
occupy. The inflexible pontiff declared he would yield 
only to compulsion. The Italian forces delayed no longer, 
but occupied the city. By one more plebiscite, this time 
the last, the life-work of the dead Cavour received its coro- 
nation, and the peninsula, reunited, had again the same 
capital as in the days of Caesar. 

The Last Years of Victor Emmanuel (1870-1878). —The 



A.D. 1870-1878.] ITALY 613 

new state at the start was surrounded by peculiar difficul- 
ties and dangers. Foremost were those arising from the 
religious question. The Pope was not merely a dispos- 
sessed temporal prince, but the spiritual head of Catholic 
Christendom. He was bitterly opposed to everything in 
the new order. He would tolerate no suggestions of com- 
promise. Against the excommunicated government of Vic- 
tor Emmanuel he threw the whole influence of the Catholic 
priesthood and appealed for help to the Catholic powers of 
Europe. The country was covered with monasteries and 
churches, which had absorbed the material wealth, while 
the people were stricken with poverty. To touch a convent 
or a priest was denounced as sacrilege. 

In the enthusiasm of revolution and conflict the Italian 
provinces had come together. At bottom they were antago- 
nistic in ideas, customs, history and local prejudices. 
They had no traditions of headship or union. Distinct 
idioms of language emphasized their separation. How 
were they ever to be moulded into one people? 

The military system of Europe laid upon Italy a heavy 
burden. When the United States of America became a 
fact, they could dismiss their troops to civil life, because 
alone upon a continent and protected by 3000 miles of 
ocean. But the safety and the very existence of Italy de- 
pended on her immediate development and maintenance of 
an immense standing army. The latest arrival among the 
nations had to conform herself to the situation as she 
found it. 

Ages of oppression had given the people few roads or 
bridges or means of communication. They had neither 
schools, courts, effective police nor equitable system of 
raising revenue. Brigandage was a profession over a large 
part of the territory. Ignorant and lawless, they were 
generations behind the civilized world. 

The king and his advisers applied themselves with pa- 
tience and good sense to the organization of the kingdom. 
They accomplished much in every department of adminis- 
tration, but evils which had been growing for centuries 
could not be radically cured in a single reign. 

By the guarantee law of May, 1871, they endeavored to 
regulate the relations of the papal and royal courts. They 
declared the person of the sovereign pontiff inviolable, 
decreed him sovereign honors and a military guard, assigned 



614 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1878-1898. 

him an annual income of 3,225,000 francs, the possession 
of the Vatican, of St. John Lateranus and the villa of Cas- 
tel-Gandolfo and their dependencies. They carefully left 
him perfect liberty in the exercise of his spiritual functions, 
while reaffirming that his temporal sovereignty had de- 
parted. But the Pope was willing to accept nothing from 
a government which he considered irreligious and anti- 
Christian, and once more protested solemnly against all the 
measures taken. 

Victor Emmanuel died on January 9, 1878, at the age of 
fifty-eight. It is pleasant to remember that on his death- 
bed he received a kindly message and absolution from the 
Holy Father, who in that supreme hour allowed his natural 
tenderness as a man to triumph over his rigid dogmatism as 
priest. One month afterwards, at the age of eighty-six, 
after a pontificate of thirty-one years — the longest in papal 
history — the Pope followed the monarch to the tomb. 
The conclave of cardinals, on February 10, elected Cardinal 
Pecci, chamberlain of the Sacred College, to the Holy See. 

The Reign of King Humbert (1878- ).— This year 
Italy celebrates the twentieth anniversary of his accession. 
His reign presents less general interest than his father's. 
Its electoral struggles have been waged rather upon the per- 
sonality of leaders — Depretis, Cairoli, Crispi — than upon 
party platforms. A leading question was that of alliances, 
whether Italy should follow France or Germany. Gradu- 
ally the centre of influence has shifted from the north to 
the more democratic provinces of the south. Burdens of 
taxation to further colonial projects and maintain an enor- 
mous army and powerful navy have fallen heavily upon an 
impoverished people. On this account during the present 
year disorders in the chief Italian cities have broken out. 
In Milan in a street fight in May, 1898, several hundred 
persons were killed and over 1000 wounded. Yet there has 
been progress in the tranquillization of the country and in 
the application of constitutional government. Specially 
has there been a remarkable development in education. 

Italy had counted upon Tunis as a future acquisition, a 
sort of colonial counterpoise to the neighboring French 
province of Algeria. But in 1881 Tunis was seized by the 
French. The angry Italians were powerless. Indignation 
at the French and national vanity made them join Germany 
and Austria in the Triple Alliance. They sought for some 



I 



A.D. 1889-1898.] ITALY 615 

equivalent for Tunis and believed they had found it on the 
western shores of the Eed Sea. By holding Massowah on 
that sea, they imagined that all the trade of Abyssinia 
would flow through their hands. It was gratifying to think 
of sharing with the other great Powers in the spoils of Africa. 
Costly wars followed with the negus of Abyssinia, but they 
gained the colony of Eritrea (1890), South Somali (1889), 
the Somali coast (1893) and Tigre (1895). Though all 
Abyssinia was declared an Italian protectorate (1889) the 
negus, Menelek, continued his resistance. General Bara- 
tieri met a terrible reverse at Amba Alaghi (1895). Com- 
mandant Galliano made a heroic defence at Makalle, but 
on March 1, 1896, General Baratieri was crushed by the 
negus at Adowa, losing all his guns and one-third of his 
troops. This frightful disaster caused the fall of Crispi, 
who had been prime minister since 1887. Finally, the 
humiliating treaty of Adis Abeba (October 26, 1896) closed 
the ill-judged and ill-advised expedition. The absolute 
independence of Abyssinia was recognized and almost all 
the Italian conquests restored. 

Italia Irredenta. — All ancient Italy, as indicated by 
geography and extending southward from the Alps, had 
been brought under one sceptre. Beyond those mountain 
barriers or inhabiting the islands of the sea were people 
whose language was Italian and who were claimed as be- 
longing to the Italian family. Such were Nice, Savoy and 
Corsica, occupied by France, Malta by Great Britain, and 
South Tyrol, Trieste and the islands and shores of the 
northwestern Adriatic by Austria. To these territories in 
common the name of Italia Irredenta or "not emancipated 
Italy" is applied. To repossess or acquire them is the am- 
bition of to-day. So little is said concerning it that the idea 
seems to slumber, but it is no less real and deep-seated. 



616 VONTEMFORARY HISTORY 



IX 

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 

Accession of Francis Joseph (1848). — The reign of 
Francis Joseph iills the history of Austria during the last 
fifty years. A youth of eighteen, he ascended a throne 
that seemed tottering to its fall. In every part of his do- 
minions there was disorder or open rebellion. In the 
proclamation announcing his accession he declared, "We 
hope with the aid of God and in concert with our peoples 
to succeed in reuniting in one great state body all the 
countries and all the races of the monarchy." This am- 
bition was worthy of a great sovereign. It was possible 
only under some form of centralized federation, which, 
while grouping all around a common point, left individu- 
ality to each. It was a programme which every people 
under the monarchy except one was ready to ratify. The 
one dissident and opposing member in the body politic was 
the German minority. Accustomed to rule, it would not 
descend to a plane of equality with the other races, on 
whom it looked with the contempt of a superior. And 
they, proud of their traditions and confident in their 
strength, asked not for favors, but for rights. As a result 
the agitation was smothered for a time and Austria entered, 
upon bleak years of pitiless reaction. 

Austrian Absolutism (1850-1866). — Letters patent from 
the emperor (January 1, 1852) divided the different prov- 
inces into administrative circles and curtailed further the 
meagre powers of the various diets. Hungary was ruled 
by martial law until 1854. The attempt was made to Ger- 
manize all Austrian subjects. The German language was 
rendered obligatory in the civil administration, the courts 
and schools of the Hungarians, Servians, Roumanians, 
Croatians, Slavonians and Bohemians. For a Bohemian to 
publish a newspaper in his own language was a crime. The 
press was silenced and jury decisions were reversed by 
superior order. 



A.D. 1855-1860.] AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 617 

In its measures of repression the government invoked 
the powerful cooperation of the Catholic Church. The 
Austrian bishops had declared " that sentiment of nation- 
ality was a relic of paganism ; that difference of languages 
was a consequence of the original fall of man." Hence all 
were to be Germanized ! The concordat of 1855 placed all 
private and public education under the control of the 
bishops, and allowed the circulation of no book which had 
met ecclesiastical censure. It gave to the high clergy the 
right to imprison and inflict corporal penalties on whom 
they pleased, and for that end put at their disposal the 
governmental police. Prince Schwartzenberg had died in 
1852. But under Alexander Bach, minister of the interior 
and negotiator of the concordat, the dark ages settled down 
upon Austria. 

In the Crimean War Austria willingly played an ignoble 
part. She owed to the Tsar Nicholas an eternal debt, 
because he had rescued her in the Hungarian revolution. 
But she dreaded the might of Hussia and would gladly see 
her crippled. Moreover, it was her interest to uphold the 
authority of the Sultan over his Christian subjects. Though 
ostensibly on the side of Great Britain and France, her 
dilatory tactics and irresolution angered the allies. When, 
by the alliance of France and Piedmont in 1859, Austria 
was swept out of Lombardy, she was reaping as she had 
sown. Her Bohemian and Hungarian subjects rejoiced in 
her reverses at Magenta and Solferino. In Bohemia the 
peasants said, "If we are defeated, we shall have a constitu- 
tion; if we are victorious, we shall have the Inquisition." 

Tlie emperor had grown older and hence stronger and 
wiser. He dismissed Bach and ventured on some timid 
reforms (1860). Goluchowski, a Galician, neither German 
nor Hungarian, was called to the ministry and allowed to 
elaborate a partial charter. The Schmerling ministry was 
charged with its application. There was to be a Chamber 
of Nobles, named by the sovereign, and a Chamber of Depu- 
ties, named by the provincial Diets. But all was so devised 
as to swamp the other nationalities under the preponderance 
of the Germans. The scheme was a dismal failure. Vene- 
tia, Hungary, Transylvania and Croatia refused to send 
their representatives. The Hungarian leader, Deak, planted 
himself firmly on the abrogated Hungarian constitution of 
1848. The Hungarian legists asserted that Francis Joseph 



618 CONTEMPOUARY HISTORY [a.d. 1860-1866. 

was not legally their sovereign as he had never come to 
their country to be crowned. The emperor paid a formal 
visit to Pesth. He dismissed Schmerling from office and 
replaced him by Belcredi, a Moravian, who cared far less 
for the Germanization of the empire. Prague, Pesth and 
Lemberg illuminated as for victory. In Galicia they even 
dared to teach the Polish language in the schools. Hun- 
gary awoke to new life, and in its Diet openly demanded 
all the rights and privileges which the Emperor Ferdinand 
IV had granted. 

The Austro-Hung^arian Monarchy and Political Reforms 
(1866). — The Austro-Prussian War, with its catastrophe of 
Sadowa, was in the end a blessing to Austria. Like Antaeus, 
she rose the stronger for having been prostrated upon the 
ground. Her German inhabitants, as arrogant and self- 
assertive as before, remained to her, but her internal and 
foreign policy could never again be the same. She was no 
longer a German state. Even the loss of Venetia, though 
a humiliation, increased rather than diminished her 
strength. As long as Austria sought her centre of gravity 
outside herself, whether in Italy or Germany, she had 
defied with impunity all the aspirations of her subject 
races and had scoffed at their historic rights. Now it was 
forced upon the consciousness of the most obtuse that she 
must revolutionize all her antecedent policy or submit to 
speedy dissolution. The Emperor Francis Joseph keenly 
realized both the imminent perils and the rich possibilities 
of the situation. A new order of things could never be 
brought about by any statesman of his dominions, identified 
as was each of them with some grievance or faction. With 
insight akin to genius he discerned the man for the hour. 
He invited a foreigner and a Protestant, a former minister 
of Saxony, the Count von Beust, to accept the chancellor- 
ship and to undertake the complete reorganization — politi- 
cal, financial, military — of the most devotedly Roman 
Catholic and hitherto the most reactionary empire in 
Europe. 

The new chancellor treated at once with the Hungarians. 
The terms of the Ausgleich or agreement with Hungary 
were submitted by a committee of sixty-seven members 
of the Magyar Diet, having at their head Francis Deak, 
"the Franklin of Hungary," the ablest, purest and most 
patriotic of her sons. Their first two proposals were, that 



A.D. 1867.] AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 619 

the emperor should recognize the independent existence of 
Hungary by giving her a ministry of her own and should 
himself be crowned as her king. Count Julius Andrassy, 
a political exile, who had been condemned to death for his 
share in the revolution of 1848, was appointed Hungarian 
prime minister (February 18, 1867). On June 8 the coro- 
nation of Francis Joseph at Pesth as king of Hungary was 
celebrated with all the ancient ceremony and pomp. 
Twenty days later he ratified the Ausgleich. The Hun- 
garian crown and stripe of green were added to the imperial 
flag, which ever since has indicated the dual monarchy. 

Every feature of the new political arrangement bore a 
dual character. The Ausgleich itself afforded a modus 
Vivendi, but it was as much a formula of separation as a for- 
mula of union. It was like the hyphen dividing and join- 
ing the two words in the official title, Austro-Hungarian, 
by which the new empire was to be known. Henceforth 
there was Cisleithania or "Austria," a jumble of all the 
states and provinces supposed to be on the west of the 
Leitha, and Transleithania or " Hungary," another jumble of 
all the states and provinces on the east of that river. In 
each jumble there were two factors, a dominant and super- 
cilious minority — Magyar in Hungary, German in Austria 

— and an overborne and refractory majority. The only 
cord which fastened Cisleithania and Transleithania to- 
gether was possession of a common dynasty. Let that 
dynasty become extinct and at once they would fall apart. 
Affairs of foreign interest but common to the two — foreign 
relations, war, marine, imperial finances — were to be con- 
fided to an imperial cabinet responsible to the parliaments 
of the two states. Affairs of domestic common interest — 
coinage, customs-duties, military service, special legislation 

— were controlled by delegates of the two parliaments, 
sixty from each state, to meet alternately at Vienna and 
Pesth. Nor could these delegates do more than vote a 
temporary arrangement, a kind of contract, for ten years. 

Such a system was an anomaly, a political experiment 
without precedent. Hungary entered upon it with her 
revived liberal constitution of 1848. She assumed three- 
tenths of the public debt. Austria likewise possessed a 
liberal constitution, in its present form dating from 1867. 
The seventeen Austrian provinces had each its Landtag or 
legislative body. Above them rose the Reichsrath, con- 



620 Contemporary history [a.d. i867-i87i. 

sisling of a house of lords and house of 203 deputies, elected 
by the seventeen Landtags. 

Hungary was appeased. The Austrian Germans were 
content, but a cry of indignation and rage went up from 
all the other peoples of the empire. The Slavs had re- 
ceived nothing but wordy concessions as to education and 
language, which were expected to be and were afterwards 
evaded. 

The Bohemians or Czechs had historic rights as ancient 
and a political entity as definite and distinct as the Magyars 
of Hungary. Nor were they far inferior to them in num- 
ber. But Count von Beust was seeking not justice but ex- 
pediency, and believed that, since two races were satisfied, 
he could ignore the rest. Bohemia, Moravia, Carniola, re- 
fused to send delegates to the Eeichsrath. So skilfully had 
the electoral apportionments been manipulated that their 
abstention did not cause a deadlock, a minority of voters 
being represented by a quorum or majority of deputies. 
An ethnographic congress was then being held in Moscow 
(1867). It was natural that many Austrian Slavs should 
attend this family reunion of pan-Slavism. Their presence 
in the ancient metropolis of the Tsars produced a profound 
sensation all over Europe. 

Meanwhile the concordat was practically abrogated, civil 
marriage authorized, education taken from clerical control, 
the jury restored, the press partially emancipated, the right 
of public meetings guaranteed, and the army reorganized 
on the Prussian model. Some of these reforms became 
sharp-edged weapons in Slavic hands. On August 22, 1868, 
the Czech deputies issued their declaration. By this 
memorable document, which constitutes the platform of 
the Bohemian nation to-day, in calm and dignified language 
they set forth their rights and their demands. Encouraged 
by the emperor (September, 1871) they submitted a pro- 
gramme, called the Fundamental Articles, which proposed 
autonomy for Bohemia under Francis Joseph, who was to 
be crowned its king. The furious outcry of the Hungarians 
and Germans prevented its being carried into effect. 
Shortly afterwards the title of chancellor was suppressed. 
Yon Beust was succeeded as minister of foreign affairs by 
Count Andrassy. Thus a Hungarian had become the min- 
isterial head of the dual empire. 

The Hungarians continued to treat their Slavic and other 



A.D. 1877-1878.] AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 621 

subjects as cruelly as the Austrians in their worst days had 
treated them. Their conception of freedom or toleration 
was limited to freedom and toleration for themselves. Dif- 
ference of religion inflamed the hatred of race. They re- 
garded the Croatians, Roumanians, Servians, Slovaks, not 
so much as members of other nationalities, but as dis- 
senters and heretics who must be Magyarized at any cost. 
Nor were they at first inclined to renew the Ausgleich with 
Austria when its first term of ten years expired. In both 
countries local matters continued to absorb the public mind 
until the insurrection in Herzegovina against the Sultan 
and the massacres in Bulgaria roused the attention of 
Europe and thrust the Eastern Question again to the front. 
Acquisition of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878). — In 1877, 
after having exhausted all the resources of diplomacy to 
end the horrors in Bulgaria, Russia declared war against 
the Sultan and invaded the Ottoman Empire. The Austro- 
Hungarian government was involved in extreme difficulty. 
Its Slavic subjects sympathized keenly with their suffering 
brethren in Turkey and demanded cooperation with Russia. 
The Hungarians, blood kinsmen of the Turks, mindful of 
Turkish hospitality in 1849 and full of resentment against 
Russia, were as eager to cooperate with Turkey. General 
Klapka, the hero of Komorn, offered his services to the 
Sultan. The Turks were toasted and feasted at Pesth and 
the Russians at Prague. The Germans, dominant at 
Vienna, cared nothing for the Bulgarians. Above all, 
they dreaded the extension of Russian influence and terri- 
tory which was certain to result from the war. But the 
racial condition of their empire made neutrality a necessity. 
To side in arms with either belligerent would rend the 
monarchy in twain. Yet, anxious to make the most of a 
dilflcult situation, the government intended that its enforced 
neutrality should be paid for. A quasi promise was ob- 
tained from the Tsar that on the conclusion of peace he 
would not oppose the occupation of Bosnia and Herze- 
govina by Austria-Hungary. The Congress of Berlin (1878) 
authorized Austria to occupy and administer those prov- 
inces ''in the name of the Sultan." Their conquest was 
bloody and costly. It added to the embarrassment of the 
empire even more than to its territory. It introduced a 
population difficult to amalgamate and increased the already 
threatening Slavic mass. 



622 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1878-1898, 

Austria-Hungary from 1878 to 1898. — Count Taaffe was 
minister-president from 1879 to 1893. An opportunist and 
a moderate, he endeavored to be hardly more than a politi- 
cal peacemaker. His efforts in that direction met little 
success, as did those of the Polish Count Badeni, who was 
in office from 1895 until November 30, 1897. Constantly 
the Austrian, and in less degree the Hungarian, parliament 
presented a scene of indescribable turbulence and confusion. 
Sometimes their disorder and lawlessness disgraced the 
name of legislation. Yet in their babel of languages and 
their bedlam of factional strife there was always something 
definite which the speaker or the party was seeking. What 
appeared to the ear or the eye mere wrangling was at bottom 
a serious assertion of principles, true or false, and a vindi- 
cation or denial of rights. Hardly anywhere else has per- 
sonality counted so little. 

Since October, 1895, Count Goluchowski, a Pole, has 
been minister of foreign affairs. To him morie than to any 
other statesman is due the policy of concert, followed by 
the six great Powers in reference to the Armenian, Cretan 
and Greek questions of 1895-1897. 

Political Problems of To-day. — In more than one respect 
the Austro-Hungarian rather than the Ottoman Empire is 
the sick man of Europe. The antagonism of its races was 
never more pronounced than to-day and their interests 
never more divergent. The general advance of education 
renders each more able to secure those ends on which it is 
fiercely determined. Circumstances have made Austria- 
Hungary a migratory state upon the map, moving toward 
the south and east. But farther progress in that direction 
is checked by the vigorous youthful states along the Dan- 
ube and the Balkans, while further disintegration is prob- 
able on the north and southwest. Yet her internal weakness 
is not so manifest as in the dark days when the present 
sovereign assumed his crown. 



A.D. 1825-1855.] EUSSIA 62,3 



X 

RUSSIA 

Nicholas I (1825-1855). —As ruler of Russia the Tsar 
Nicholas during his reign of thirty years exercised a three- 
fold influence upon European politics. First, as heir, not 
only to the victorious empire, but to the ideas of his 
brother, Alexander I, he was the acknowledged head of the 
absolutist or reactionary party throughout Europe. Sec- 
ond, as sovereign of the largest Slavic state, he was the 
hope of an awakening pan-Slavism, that should reunite 
Slavic tribes. The overthrow and absorption of Poland, 
the second largest Slavic state, after an intermittent war- 
fare of centuries between her and Kussia, was congenial to 
the other Slavs. It was among the Western states that she 
found most sympathizers and not among peoples of the 
same blood. Third, as sovereign of the empire of ortho- 
doxy, he was regarded, and regarded himself, as of right 
the protector and champion of his coreligionists, subjects 
of other rulers, specially of the Greek Orthodox Christians, 
subjects of the Sultan of Turkey. 

This presumed right of a Eussian Tsar had been recog- 
nized by treaties, such as those of Kai'nardji (1774), Yassi 
(1792), Adrianople (1829) and Hunkiar Iskelessi (1833), 
with the Ottoman Empire. In this respect Nicholas was 
the legitimate successor of Peter the Great. Yet unlike 
Peter he detested Western civilization. A young man of 
eighteen at the time of the French invasion, the horrors 
and the triumph of tliat gigantic struggle were burned into 
his soul. Eussia unaided iiad then annihilated the hosts 
of the hitherto invincible Napoleon. It is not strange if 
Nicholas thought that Eussia could withstand the world. 
By his accession in 1825, just a century after the death of 
the great Tsar, the Muscovite Empire, for the first time in 
a hundred years, had a sovereign who was wholly Eussian 
at heart and who believed only in Eussia. The Eussians 
adored him with such loyalty as no other ruler of the house 



624 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1851-1853. 

of Eomanoff had received. His unlooked-for advent to the 
throne was regarded as the special interposition of Provi- 
dence. His brother, Constantine, seventeen years his 
senior, was the natural heir of Alexander I. But Con- 
stantine in 1820 had become devotedly attached to the 
Polish Countess Groudsinska. He could marry her only 
on condition of renouncing his rights of inheritance. He 
preferred the hand of the lady to the crown of Russia. 
"That, surely," said the peasants, "must have come from 
God." 

The Crimean War (1853-1856). — Its apparent cause 
was a contention between Greek Orthodox and Latin 
priests as to the custody of certain holy places in Jerusa- 
lem (1851). The former were supported by Russia and 
the latter by France and Austria. A mixed commission to 
examine the matter was appointed by Sultan Abd-ul Medjid, 
which, while giving a temperate report, on the whole fa- 
vored the Latins. The Russians and the Greek Orthodox 
rayahs of Turkey were indignant at the decision. It was a 
general Eastern superstition that the year 1853, which 
completed four centuries from the capture of Constanti- 
nople, would see the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. 
The Tsar believed all things were propitious to hasten that 
event. 

He held two secret interviews (January 9 and 14, 1853) 
with Sir Hamilton Seymour, the British ambassador at St. 
Petersburg, wherein he spoke without reserve and asked 
the cooperation of Great Britain. He proposed to unite 
the Danubian provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia into ai? 
independent state under the protection of Russia, and 
create two states of Servia and Bulgaria. He said nothing 
definite about Constantinople, but offered Crete and Egypt 
to Great Britain. It is interesting to remark that, with 
the exception of Crete, whose destiny is still undecided, the 
other propositions of the Tsar have become facts. "If 
we agree," he said, "I care little what the others" — 
France and Austria — "may do." The British ambassa- 
dor shrewdly made public all that had been said to him in 
confidence. "The others" were enraged at the small 
account taken of them rather than at the propositions. 

In May, 1853, Prince Mentchikoff was sent to Constan- 
tinople with a peremptory note, demanding that the com- 
plaints of Russian pilgrims to the Holy Land receive 



A.D. 185a-1856.J RUSSIA 625 

satisfaction and that guarantees be given for the protection 
of the Greek Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. 
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, British ambassador to the 
Porte from 1842 to 1858, encouraged the Sultan to refuse 
compliance. The Russian armies crossed the Pruth and 
occupied the principalities. To avert war the Austrian 
government drew up the "Vienna Note," which was ap- 
proved by France and Great Britain and accepted by Russia. 
But the British ambassador at Constantinople secured its 
rejection by the Sultan and persuaded him to take reso- 
lute action. The Porte delivered an ultimatum to Russia 
(September 26) and declared war (October 4). 

The subsequent events of the struggle and its conclusion 
in the treaty of Paris are narrated in the chapter on the 
"Second French Empire." Nicholas had been outwitted 
in diplomacy and defeated in arms. Broken-hearted and 
disillusioned, even before the capture of Sebastopol, the 
"iron emperor" gave way. Sick and suffering, he com- 
mitted imprudences which can only be explained as a 
desire to hasten his end. He himself dictated the despatch 
which he sent to all the great cities of Russia, "The em- 
peror is dying," and expired on March 2, 1855. 

The disasters of the Crimea had been a cruel revelation, 
not only to him but to his subjects. His army and his 
people had supposed they were to revolutionize the East, 
indefinitely extend their empire, and drive out the crescent 
from Jerusalem. Instead, they were obliged to dismantle 
their own fortresses and withdraw their warships from the 
Black Sea. Nothing however had occurred to disprove 
their proud boast that, should any hostile nation really 
penetrate Russia, its sovereign would there lose his crown 
like Charles XII and Napoleon the Great, and its army 
would leave there its bones. 

Alexander II (1855-1881). —"Your burden will be 
heavy," his father had said to him when dying. To 
bear this burden nature had well fitted the new Tsar. 
Though devoted to his father's memory, he realized that 
his father's system had been found wanting and that 
another epoch must open in Russia. Everywhere there 
was the sullen rumble of discontent. Of mediocre ability, 
self-distrustful rather than headstrong, just, patient and 
plodding, he desired to inaugurate a new era. He deter- 
mined to reform where it was possible and to mitigate what 
2s 



626 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1856-1861. 

he could not reform. In his manifesto immediately after 
the conclusion of peace he outlined his policy almost with 
boldness. The corruption and inefficiency of administra- 
tion had been protected by a muzzled press, by a rigorous 
police and by a compulsory silence on the part of the people. 
He encouraged freedom of speech and thought. "The 
conservative. Russia of Nicholas I seemed buried under the 
sod. Every one declared himself a liberal." Public 
opinion wished to undertake every reform at once, but the 
question of social reform dominated all others. 

There were then 47,200,000 serfs, divided into two great 
classes. Of these 24,700,000, dependent upon the crown, 
enjoyed a large degree of personal freedom. They exer- 
cised local self-government, administered their own affairs 
in communes, or mirs, by an elected council, and possessed 
tribunals which they had themselves chosen. The prohi- 
bition to dispose of or acquire property and to remove from 
the place of birth was abolished by successive ukases, be- 
ginning July, 1858. 

The other 22,500,000 serfs, the "disposition" of 120,000 
nobles, were hardly better than slaves. The system had 
grown up strangely when Eussia was bowed under the Tar- 
tar yoke, but it had been introduced by native princes 
and not by foreigners. Gradually the preceding Tsars or 
dukes of Moscow had imposed their absolute will on their 
vassals, the nobles, and the nobles had succeeded in doing 
the same to their vassals, the peasants or serfs, only more 
effectually. These aristocratic usurpations had been even 
confirmed and the mujik still further restricted by suc- 
cessive ukases during two centuries. Alexander I and 
Nicholas I himself had vainly tried to modify the iniqui- 
tous system. Innumerable difficulties stood in the way. 
Who should indemnify the proprietors for their loss? What 
was the advantage of freedom to emancipated serfs who 
could possess nothing of their own? 

In March, 1856, Alexander II invited his " faithful no- 
bility " to consider what steps were necessary to bring about 
emancipation. His suggestions were coldly received. He 
travelled over the country, appealing to the nobles to assist 
him, but their inertia was harder to overcome than active 
opposition. Finally, he issued his immortal edict of 
emancipation (March 3, 1861). Thus by a stroke of the 
pen, the serfs, hitherto fastened to the soil, were raised to 



A.D. 1861-1871.] RUSSIA 627 

the rank of freemen. Provision was made for their acquir- 
ing property and for the protection of their newly granted 
liberty. But a change so radical was accompanied by local 
disturbances and bloodshed. 

An annual statement of the public finances began to be 
made. The universities were delivered from the restric- 
tions imposed by Nicholas. Foreigners acquired the same 
rights as were enjoyed by Russians abroad. Censorship 
of the press had been already relaxed. The use of the 
knout was abolished. Such Jews as exercised any manual 
occupation received permission to settle freely in the 
empire. 

Reforms were likewise introduced into the administration 
of Poland. But the spirit of nationality was not extinct 
and nothing less than independence could satisfy the Poles. 
Further concessions accomplished little. The troubles 
went on increasing until January, 1863, when they took the 
form of guerilla warfare. Resistance was cruelly put down. 
The insurrection cost dearly to Poland. The last remains 
of her national life were stamped out. Polish was replaced 
by Russian as the official language and was forbidden in the 
schools. Ardent Slavophils wished likewise to Russify 
Finland, but the Tsar confirmed all its political privileges. 
Livonia, Esthonia and Courland were not disquieted but 
continued to exist as vassal provinces, with their own lan- 
guage and laws, under the Russian crown. 

Meanwhile the war in America was going on for the 
preservation of the Union. Russia was pronounced and 
outspoken in friendliness to the United States. The firm 
and consistent course pursued by her, when other powers 
were desirous of our national dissolution, is something 
which Americans cannot forget. 

Revision of the Treaty of Paris (1871). —In 1870 Prince 
Gortschakoff, the Russian chancellor, informed the Euro- 
pean Powers that Russia no longer considered herself bound 
by the Treaty of Paris as far as it curtailed her natural 
rights on the Black Sea. Various infractions of that treaty 
were assigned as reasons for this declaration. A conference 
of the signatory states at London accepted the declaration 
of Russia. Thus the most important result of the Crimean 
War was annulled. Russia has since been free to construct 
such fortifications as she pleased upon the shores of the 
Black Sea and to maintain a navy upon its waters. This 



628 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1872-1876. 

right was furthermore ratified by an agreement with Turkey 
(March 18, 1872). 

The Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878). —The promises of 
the Sultan to introduce reform in the treatment of his 
Christian subjects had been flagrantly and constantly broken. 
Protected by the Treaty of Paris, wherein the Powers had 
waived all right to interfere in the internal affairs of the 
Ottoman Empire, the Turks were no longer influenced by 
the restraint of fear. In 1874 the Slavic rayahs of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina rebelled. Again the Sultan promised 
reforms, but the insurgents demanded guarantees that he 
would keep his word. To prevent the flames of insurrec- 
tion from spreading, Count Andrassy, the Austro-Hunga- 
rian chancellor, obtained the Sultan's approval to certain 
measures enumerated in a formal note (February 12, 1876), 
but the insurgents were still distrustful. Suddenly the 
consuls of Germany and France at Salonica were massacred 
by a Mussulman mob. Eussia, Germany and Austria united 
in the memorandum of Berlin (May 1), demanding of the 
Sultan a two months' armistice with the Bosnians and 
Herzegovinians and immediate introduction of the reforms. 
They threatened the employment of force in case of refusal. 
Encouraged by the support of Great Britain, who refused to 
approve the memorandum, the Sultan withheld his consent. 

The horrors of Bulgaria broke out, where more than 
20,000 Bulgarians were massacred. Public meetings in 
Great Britain denounced the atrocities. Servia and Mon- 
tenegro took up arms. The latter was victorious. The 
former was totally defeated, though the Servian army con- 
tained many Russian volunteers and was commanded by the 
Russian General Tchernai'eff. Alexander II and the Rus- 
sian official party wished to avoid war, though the Tsar in 
a speech at Moscow (November 12) openly expressed his 
sympathy for the Christians. France and Germany held 
themselves aloof. Austria did her utmost to preserve 
peace. Great Britain proposed a conference of the Powers 
at Constantinople, which met on November 23. It pre- 
sented an ultimatum, requiring the autonomy of Bosnia, 
Herzegovina and Bulgaria, concessions of territory to 
Montenegro, the status quo for Servia, a general amnesty, 
genuine reform in Turkish administration and judiciary, 
and the nomination by the great Powers of two commis- 
sions to see th^'t the promises were carried gut. In case of 



A.D. 1877-1878.] RUSSIA 629 

refusal all the ambassadors were to demand their passports. 
Sultan Abd-ul Hamid II was on the throne, his predeces- 
sors, Sultan Abd-ul Aziz and Sultan Mourad V, having been 
overthrown that same year by revolution. The astute 
Midhat Pasha was grand vizier. Again encouraged by the 
British ambassador, the Sultan refused to comply. 

No Power was willing to act, though the ambassadors in 
a body had formally left Constantinople. Midhat Pasha 
signed a treaty with Servia, but Montenegro held out. 
Prince Gortschakoft" sent a circular note to the European 
courts (January 31) and General Ignatieff, the Eussian 
ambassador, travelled over Europe to induce united action. 
The protocol of London (March 31) invited the Sultan to 
disarm, and announced, that if he continued to violate 
his promises of reform, the great Powers would consult 
further. 

Nothing had been accomplished. The resources of a 
diplomacy of words were exhausted. Turkey was still in- 
different or defiant. In Russia the Tsar and the official 
classes still hesitated, but the Russian people were aflame. 
Public sentiment, even in a despotic empire, could not be 
resisted. The same forces of humanity and sympathy, 
which com]3elled the American government to take up 
arms in the effort to end the horrors in Cuba, compelled 
the reluctant Tsar to take up arms to end longer-con- 
tinued and more atrocious horrors in the dominions of 
the Saltan. The Russian war of 1877-1878 against Turkey 
finds its exact parallel in the American war of 1898 against 
Spain. Both were spontaneous armed uprisings in behalf 
of mankind. 

The Tsar issued his manifesto on April 24, 1877. The 
war lasted until the preliminary treaty of San Stephano 
on March 31, 1878. It was carried on in both Asia and 
Europe. 

In Asia the Russian general-in-chief, the Armenian 
Loris Melikoff, captured Ardahan (May 17). General Der 
Hougassoff, also an Armenian, took Bayezid (April 20) and 
gained the battles of Dram Dagh (June 10) and Dai'ar 
(June 21). Melikoff, defeated at Zewin (June 26) by 
Mouktar Pasha, was obliged to retreat. The Russians 
received reenforcements. Mouktar Pasha was crushed at 
Aladja Dagh (October 14-16) and driven into Erzeroum. 
Kars was stormed (November 18) and fell with 17,000 pris- 



630 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1877-1878. 

oners and 300 cannon. The road to Constantinople through 
Asia Minor was open. 

In Europe Abd-ul Kerim Pasha, Turkish commander-in- 
chief, remained apathetic in his camp at Shoumla. The 
main Eussian army crossed the Danube at Sistova (June 27). 
Baron von Krudener took Nicopolis with 7000 prisoners, 113 
cannon and two monitors (July 15). General Gourko at- 
tacked the Turks in the Balkans and seized the Shipka Pass 
(July 17-19). Panic reigned at Constantinople. The Ot- 
toman Minister of War, Redif Pasha, who had proclaimed 
the Holy War, was removed. Abd-ul Kerim Pasha was re- 
placed by Mehemet Ali Pasha, the son of a German tailor 
converted to Islam. Soulei'man Pasha was recalled from 
Montenegro to protect the capital. Jealousy prevented 
cooperation among the Ottoman generals. Soulei'man 
Pasha dashed his army against the Russians and the Bul- 
garian legion in vain attempts to regain the Shipka Pass 
(August 16 and September 17). Mehemet Ali Pasha was 
terribly defeated at Tserkoria (September 21). Osman 
Pasha was forced into Plevna (August 31). There he de- 
fended himself with skill and bravery. But his capitula- 
tion was only a question of time. General Todleben, who 
had fortified Sebastopol in the Crimean war, took charge of 
the siege. Skobeleff and Gourko cut off all communication. 
The Roumanians, who had declared themselves independent 
and had joined the Russians with 60,000 men, performed 
prodigies of valor. By a general sortie Osman Pasha tried 
to break through the iron circle, but was forced to surrender 
with 43,000 soldiers (December 10). The siege had lasted 
almost four months. The Sultan- now wished to treat for 
peace, but was persuaded by the British ambassador. Sir 
Austin Layard, to continue the war. Souleiman Pasha re- 
placed Mehemet Ali Pasha and gained a tardy victory at 
Elena (November 20). 

The famous Turkish quadrilateral of Silistria, Roust- 
chouk, Shoumla and Varna was still intact. Already the 
mountain passes were blocked with snow. An unusually 
severe season had begun. The Turks supposed that hostili- 
ties would cease until spring. The Grand Duke Nicholas 
ordered General Gourko to force the Balkans. Then fol- 
lowed a magnificent winter campaign along ravines and 
precipices, where the soldiers themselves dragged the 
cannon. The astounded Turks were everywhere defeated. 



A.D. 1878.] RUSSIA 631 

Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, which had not seen a Chris- 
tian army for 400 years, "^vas entered (January 3, 1878). Six 
days later Wessir Pasha surrendered with 32,000 men and 
sixty-six cannon. 

The Ottoman Empire seemed entering its death agony. 
The Servians had declared war. Thessaly, Macedonia and 
Albania were in open rebellion. The Cretans were tumultu- 
ously demanding union with Greece. The Greek army 
crossed the frontier. The Montenegrins captured fortress 
after fortress in the west. The Eussians effected their 
junction at Adrianople (January 20) and reached the Mar- 
mora on January 31. That same day an armistice was 
signed at Adrianople. It was time. To oppose the ad- 
vance of the invaders the Sultan had only a corps of 12,000 
men, camped on the hills of Tchataldja, an easy day's 
march from the capital. 

The rapid Russian successes x^roduced intense excitement 
in Great Britain. The government made vigorous prepara- 
tions for*war. The British fleet passed the Dardanelles and 
anchored close to Constantinople (February 14). There- 
upon the Grand Duke Nicholas advanced to San Stephano, 
seven miles from the city walls. 

On March 3 the Russian and Ottoman plenipotentiaries 
signed the preliminary treaty of San Stephano. It recog- 
nized the independence of both Eoumania and Servia. The 
latter was enlarged by the district of Nisch. The former 
received the Dobroudja in exchange for Bessarabia, which 
was restored to Russia as before the Crimean war. Mon- 
tenegro gained the ports of Spizza and Antivari on the 
Adriatic and more than doubled its territory. In Asia 
Russia was confirmed in the possession of the eastern quad- 
rilateral, Kars, Ardahan, Bayezid and Batoum. The Turks 
were condemned to pay a war indemnity of 300,000,000 
roubles. Bulgaria was created a vassal principality of the 
Sultan. It was to extend from the Danube to the ^gean 
Sea, thus cutting in twain the still remaining Turkish pos- 
sessions in Europe. Never had the Ottoman Empire signed 
a treaty as fatal. 

The Congress of Berlin (1878). — The preliminary treaty 
of San Stephano terrified Austria, who saw aggrandized 
Slavic states on her southwest frontier neighboring upon 
her own Slavic peoples. It enraged Great Britain, who saw 
in it the practical extinction of the Ottoman Empire. But 



632 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1878. 

Austria was held in check by Germany. Great Britain, 
though unable to put a large army into the field, employed 
every weapon known to diplomacy. Russia was neither 
desirous of nor prepared for further war. After much ne- 
gotiation with the courts of Great Britain and Germany, 
she agreed to submit the treaty to a congress of the Powers 
at Berlin. A secret agreement however had just been ar- 
rived at for their two governments by Count Schouvaloff 
and Lord Salisbury. 

The congress opened on June 13 and continued in session 
just one month. The nations were represented by their 
ablest and most illustrious statesmen. Among the dele- 
gates were Count Andrassy, Austro-Hangarian Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, Monsieur Waddington from France, Count 
Corti from Italy, Mehemet Ali Pasha and Caratheodoridi 
Pasha from Turkey, Lord Salisbury from Great Britain and 
Count Schouvaloff from Russia. The three most conspicu- 
ous figures were Prince Bismarck, who presided. Prince 
Gortschakoff, chancellor of Russia, and Lord Beaconsfield, 
prime minister of Great Britain. 

The treaty of Berlin much reduced the size of the pro- 
posed Bulgaria. It also divided it in two : " Principality 
of Bulgaria," between the Danube and the Balkans, an 
autonomous state tributary to the Sultan; "Province of 
Eastern Roumelia," extending south of the Balkans half- 
way to the ^gean Sea. The latter, though under a Chris- 
tian governor, was to depend directly upon the Sultan. 
The independence of Roumania and Servia was recognized, 
but, as in the case of the always independent Montenegro, 
their proposed acquisitions were diminished. Bosnia and 
Herzegovina were assigned to Austria. The wish was ex- 
pressed, though not inserted in the treaty, that the Sultan 
make certain concessions of territory to the Greeks. As 
to the Christian subjects of the Sultan, the congress con- 
tented itself with a repetition of his familiar promises to 
introduce reforms. In Asia Khotour was ceded to Persia, 
and the Russians restored Bayezid to Turkey, though retain- 
ing Kars, Batoum and Ardahan. 

During the session the revelation was made of a secret 
treaty for defensive alliance between Great Britain and 
Turkey, which had been concluded on the preceding 4th 
of June. In this secret treaty Great Britain agreed to unite 
in arms with the Sultan in defense of the Ottoman Empire 



A.D. 1878.] RUSSIA 633 

in case it should ever be attacked by Eussia. In return the 
Sultan promised to assign the island of Cyprus to Great 
Britain and to introduce the necessary reforms in the treat- 
ment of his Christian subjects — such reforms to be deter- 
mined later by the two Powers. 

The congress of Berlin, not only in the very fact of its 
existence but in its decisions, was a diplomatic defeat for 
Russia. Her main object, the deliverance of Bulgaria, was 
indeed attained, but this Bulgaria was torn asunder and 
shorn of its strength. Great Britain and Austria without 
fighting had gained : the one, Cyprus and preponderance in 
Asia Minor; and the other, Bosnia and Herzegovina, ad- 
vancement on the road to Salonica and hence djrect influ- 
ence over Montenegro and Servia. The Turkish Empire had 
been rescued from destruction, its existence prolonged and 
further opportunity afforded for future outrage and mas- 
sacre. For Beaconsfield and Great Britain that congress 
was a striking but none the less a deplorable triumph. 

The Nihilists. — The reforms after the accession of Alex- 
ander II had come upon the people like a galvanic shock. 
However warmly, though vaguely, desired, their application 
caused everywhere dissatisfaction. The ingrained despotic 
system had vitiated every activity of life. The serfs were 
dissatisfied because they had not gained more. The nobles 
were sullen because, when dispossessed of their serfs, their 
revenues were curtailed. The hosts of students from the 
humbler classes, attracted by scholarships or purses to the 
universities and newly opened colleges, found on comple- 
tion of their studies that all the civil and official positions 
were already occupied by the privileged and themselves 
shut out. Everywhere there was discontent, like morbid 
soreness of the body ready to propagate political disease. 

The irresolute Tsar was discouraged. Some proposed 
reforms he withheld and others he partially withdrew. The 
government tried to relax and tighten the reins at the same 
time. Reaction set in, and the counter reaction was nihil- 
ism. Russian nihilism could resemble the mad vagaries of 
no other country, for it was stamped with the peculiarities 
of the Russian mind. Though the nihilist considered Rus- 
sia diseased, he looked upon all other lands as equally or 
still more rotten. In Russia he s3,w nothing worth the 
keeping, and in the rest of the world he saw nothing worth 
the taking. Some of the nihilists were theorists and 



634 CONTEMP OR A R Y HIS TOR Y [a.d. 1880. 

dreamers. Others, the more daring and dangerous, were 
revolutionists. Their ranks were recruited by men and 
women from the universities, who were maddened by en- 
forced idleness and poverty and social wrongs. Never 
numerous, their almost inhuman activity multiplied their 
numbers in common opinion. Their contempt for death 
gave them horrible efficiency. Tracked and hunted like 
wild beasts, they surpassed wild beasts in merciless ferocity. 
For years Eussia was mined and countermined by them and 
their terrible antagonists, the secret police of the dreaded 
third section. 

Assassinations and attempts at assassination followed 
fast. M^veeff, rector of the university of Kiev, Mezent- 
seff, chiefof the third section. Prince Krapotkine, governor 
of Kharkof, Colonel Knoop at Odessa, Captain Eeinstein at 
Moscow, Pietrovski, chief of police at Archangel, and scores 
of prominent persons were stabbed or shot. An attempt 
was made to blow up the imperial family with dynamite at 
the winter palace (1880). The explosion killed sixty sol- 
diers and wounded forty. The Tsarina died in June, 1880. 
The nihilists matured their plans to blow up the bridge 
over which the funeral cortege was to pass and destroy the 
imperial hearse with all the mourners, the foreign princes 
and guards. A sudden storm so swelled the waters of the 
Neva as to prevent the execution of the plot. 

On December 4, 1879, the Nihilist Executive Committee 
sent the Tsar his sentence of death, but for a long time 
every effort to put it in execution failed. In February, 
1881, he submitted the scheme of a constitution to a coun- 
cil. On March 9 he gave the elaborated form his approval, 
but, hesitating still, delayed its proclamation. On the 
morning of March 13 he sent the order for its publication 
in the official messenger. That afternoon, while riding, a 
bomb was thrown against his carriage. Many soldiers and 
pedestrians were killed, but the emperor was unharmed. 
"Let me see the wounded," he exclaimed, and sprang from 
his carriage. Instantly a second bomb was thrown at him. 
Horribly mutilated, he was borne to his palace, where he 
expired without uttering a word. 

In 1861 he had emancipated the serfs. In 1878 he had 
freed Bulgaria. At *the moment of his death the Consti- 
tution which he had granted was being set in type. It is a 
strange and sad coincidence that the two liberators, the 



A.D. 1881-1882.] RUSSIA 635 

president who freed the slaves in the United States and the 
Tsar who freed the serfs in Kussia, should both perish by 
the hand of an assassin. 

Reign of Alexander III (1881-1894). —Alexander III 
had to choose between two roads. Should he follow the 
progressive policy of his father and confirm the still un- 
published constitution, or should he set his face backward 
and reign like Nicholas I? "Change none of my father's 
orders, " he said at first. " It " — the Constitution — " shall 
be his last will and testament." Unhappily for Russia such 
sentiments did not last. In Pobiedonostseff, High Procu- 
rator of the Holy Synod, a reactionary fanatic of spotless 
integrity, and the Slavophil, General Ignatieff, he found 
congenial counsellors. The Constitution was withheld. The 
temperate and humane General Melikoff, the trusted friend 
of his father, tendered his resignation. General Ignatieff 
was made Minister of the Interior. 

The day of absolutism, espionage and Russification by 
force had come back. The government endeavored in do- 
mestic affairs to undo all that Alexander II had done. 
Hatred of everything foreign was the mode. Katkoff, the 
violent editor of the Moscoiv Gazette, was allowed the utmost 
latitude, because he so fully expressed all the dynastic and 
popular passions of the hour. Never was Russian intoler- 
ance manifested in more annoying ways and with greater 
severity. The treatment of the Jews was a disgrace to hu- 
manity. They were forbidden to own or lease land or to 
exercise any liberal profession. They were ordered to con- 
centrate in a few western provinces so as to be more 
easily watched. More than 300,000 emigrated. The gov- 
ernment was no more cruel than the people. In Balta the 
peasants without provocation sacked 976 Jewish houses and 
killed or wounded 219 Jews. The Lutherans and Dis- 
senters were treated unmercifully. At last even General 
IgnatiefE was shocked or alarmed, and proposed moderation. 

Prince Gortschakoff, at the age of eighty-two, asked to 
be relieved from his duties as chancellor (1882). As his 
successor the war party desired General Ignatieff, the peace 
party M. de Giers. Despite its antipathy for Europe, the 
foreign policy of the government was pacific. M. de Giers 
was appointed. His rival, in chagrin, withdrew to private 
life. Count Tolstoi was made Minister of the Interior and 
under him the anti-Semitic agitation was sternly repressed. 



636 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 188;M896. 

Improvement in the public finances, brought about by 
Vichnegradzy, the Minister of Finance, is almost the only 
alleviation in this dismal reign. 

The nihilists, boastful of their success in " removing " a 
Tsar, continued their work. They held Russia in such 
terrorism that the coronation of Alexander III had been 
postponed almost two years. The Tsar had distinguished 
himself as a soldier in the Russo-Turkish war, but his life 
on the throne was passed in constant fear of assassination. 
Immediately on accession he had appointed his brother, 
Vladimir, to serve as regent in case of necessity. Cease- 
less watchfulness and dread sapped his strength. The long 
illness from which he finally died (October 31, 1894) was 
largely due to the incessant attempts of the nihilists upon 
his life. 

Nicholas II (1894- ). — Though at first apparently 
desirous of following in his father's steps, he soon showed 
himself awake to the spirit of the age. On November 27 
at St. Petersburg he married the Princess Alix of Hesse, 
granddaughter of Queen Victoria. All the troops and police 
were withdrawn from the streets. The people were allowed 
without restraint to climb the lamp-posts and trees and 
crowd the windows along the route of the bridal procession. 
Such freedom on such an occasion had never been known in 
Russia. This manifest confidence in his subjects made a 
profound impression and won him immense popularity. In 
the formal visits of the imperial consorts to different parts 
of the empire the same shrewd etiquette of confidence has 
been followed. 

On the death of M. de Giers (January, 1895), who had 
been the real director of Russian foreign policy since the 
treaty of Berlin, Prince Lobanoff became Minister of Foreign 
Affairs and proved himself equally pacific. The serious 
Pamir difficulty as to the boundary between the British 
and Russian Asiatic possessions was settled in a manner 
honorable to both countries. 

The splendor of the coronation ceremonies at Moscow 
(May 20, 1896) was darkened by a terrible catastrophe. 
Over 400,000 people had crowded together on the Khodyn- 
skoye plain to feast as guests of the Tsar. Insufficient 
police were present to control the immense mass. In the 
crush over 3000 persons were suffocated or trampled to 
death. In his coronation manifesto the Tsar announced 



A.D. 1896-1898.] RUSSIA 637 

that the land tax was diminished one-half and that a com- 
prehensive amnesty had been granted to political offenders. 
Soon afterward Nicholas II and the Tsarina visited Austria- 
Hungary, Great Britain, France and Germany. 

In 1897 the Tsar was received with enthusiasm at War- 
saw. As a token of his appreciation he granted permission 
for the erection of a statue to Mickievitch, the patriot poet 
whose songs had inspired the Poles in their former resist- 
ance to Russia. In the same year for the first time a gen- 
eral census of the empire was undertaken. 

The present of Russia is full of hope. A more enlight- 
ened spirit is making its way among the government and 
people. Nihilism for a time at least is silent or has dis- 
appeared. Slowly, but none the less surely, the condition 
of the serfs is improving. The energies of the country are 
concentrating in industrial and commercial channels and its 
limitless natural resources being utilized. 

With progress at home is coupled a parallel advance of 
Russian influence abroad. To-day that influence in a strik- 
ing manner is being exerted in behalf of the world's 
tranquillity and peace. On August 28, 1898, the Russian 
government communicated to the courts of Europe one of 
the most memorable State papers ever issued. This docu- 
ment in graphic language set forth the terrible burden 
imposed by the existence of vast standing armies and by 
national rivalry in military armaments. It deplored the 
waste of men and material resources, consequent on this 
unnatural condition of affairs. It declared that " the 
supreme duty to-day imposed upon all States" is "to put 
an end to these incessant armaments and to seek the means 
of warding off the calamities which are threatening the 
whole world." In dignified terms, such as a mighty empire 
dreading no superior alone could use, it proposed a con- 
ference of all the Powers " to occupy itself with this grave 
problem of universal peace." Wliatever the outcome of the 
conference, the proposition is a blessed augury for the 
twentieth century. 



638 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1839. 



XI 

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 

The Hatti Sherif of Ghul Khaneh (1839).— Two days 
after the battle of Nezib, while the victorious Egyptians 
were marching upon Constantinople, Sultan Mahmouddied. 
Only the interference of the European powers checked their 
advance and preserved the throne to his son, Sultan Abd-ul 
Medjid. Though failing in almost every enterprise he 
undertook, Mahmoud had made earnest efforts to reform 
the empire. His successor inherited his ideas. At the 
summer palace of Ghul Khaneh, in the presence of the 
foreign diplomatic body, of the heads of the various sub- 
ject churches, of deputations from all the guilds, and of the 
great dignitaries, ecclesiastical, military and civil, of the 
Ottoman state, his Hatti Sherif, or Sacred Proclamation, 
was read by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Reshid Pasha 
(Kovember 3, 1839). Everything was done to give solem- 
nity and a binding character to this rescript. It concluded 
with a prayer and an imprecation, and the vast assembly of 
Moslems, Christians and Jews responded "Amen." 

This was the first formal acknowledgment of abuses and 
the first official declaration of a purpose to reform that was 
ever made by an Ottoman sovereign. It guaranteed security 
of life, property and honor to all subjects of the empire, a 
uniform and just taxation and uniformity in conscription 
and military service. It suppressed monopolies, pro- 
nounced that all court trials be xmblic, removed restrictions 
from the sale and purchase of real estate, and ordered that 
the property of criminals be no longer confiscated but 
handed over to their natural heirs. These measures were 
aimed at correcting those violations of justice from which 
Christians and Mussulmans suffered in common. Its most 
important provision declared that henceforth Mussulman 
and Christian subjects should be equal before the law. 
Hitherto the theory and practice since the foundation of 
the empire had been flagrant inequality between the adhe- 



A.D. 1840-1854.] THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 639 

rents of the two religions. For example, the testimony of a 
Christian was not admissible in court against a Mussulman. 
A Christian could only hire Mussulman witnesses, who 
were allowed to testify for him. 

The Christians regarded the Hatti Sherif with mixed 
hope and incredulity. It enraged the Mussulmans, who 
believed that equality between them and the giaours was a 
contradiction of the Koran as well as of all their past his- 
tory. But in Christian Europe, accustomed to see promises 
followed by deeds, it caused a profound and favorable 
impression. 

Massacres in the Lebanon (1845). — The Sultan, well 
meaning but feeble, made only desultory efforts to put his 
proclamation into effect. In most localities it remained a 
dead letter. In others it stirred up the Moslems to prove 
that there had been no change in the old order. The region 
of Lebanon was inhabited by many religious sects. Among 
the more powerful were the Catholic Maronites, who enjoyed 
the protection of France, and the Druses, a wild tribe of 
heretical Mussulmans, followers of the mad Caliph Hakim. 
Under their leader, the Sheik Abou Naked, the Druses 
made a sudden attack. His followers had strict orders to 
harm only the Catholics, for then as always there was 
method in a Mussulman massacre. Every conceivable 
horror marked the passage of the bandit chief. He spared 
neither sex nor age. The government forbade the Maron- 
ites to defend themselves, but told them to trust in the 
padishah. The Turkish soldiers, sent to preserve order, 
remained inactive or openly sided with the Druses. The 
French missionary stations were destroj^ed, their churches 
and convents sacked and priests murdered. M. Guizot, 
then prime minister of France, dared not interfere. The 
French ambassador at Constantinople, M. de Bourqueney, 
was bolder. He sent a peremptory message to the Porte. 
The massacres ceased. New measures for the administra- 
tion of the Lebanon were introduced and a degree of tran- 
quillity was restored. 

Question of the Holy Places. The Crimean War (1853- 
1856). — This subject has been sufficiently discussed in the 
chapters on the second French em23ire and Eussia. Save 
at its beginning the Turks played an insignificant and 
humiliating part in the war. Their assistance seemed as 
much disdained by the British and French troops as their 



640 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1855-1858. 

resistance had been by the Eussians. Before the arrival of 
their allies the Ottoman commander-in-chief, Omar Pasha, 
a Christian renegade, had shown ability on the Danube. 
The successful defence of Silistria, where six assaults of the 
Russian army were repulsed, was honorable to Turkish 
arms. In signing the offensive and defensive treaty with 
Great Britain and France, the Porte promised to accomplish 
the following reforms : " Equality before the law and eligi- 
bility to all offices of all Ottoman subjects without distinc- 
tion of religion; admission of Christian testimony in court; 
establishment of mixed tribunals ; abolition of the kharadj 
or exemption tax." 

The Hatti Humayoun (1856). —The Hatti Sherif of 
Ghul Khaneh had proved abortive. The abyss still yawned 
unbridged between the Mussulmans and the Christians. 
Language can hardly set forth the sense of superiority 
among the former. The cadi of Mardin in 1855 gave a 
permit for the interment of a Christian in the following 
words : '' Permission to the priest of Mary to bury the im- 
pure and offensive carcass of Saidah, who went to hell this 
very day. Signed, Said Mehemed Faize." In its language 
and its sentiment toward their subjects, this paper was 
typical of the ruling race. A Hatti Humayoun, or Imperial 
Proclamation, was issued on February 18, 1856. It reaf- 
firmed and extended all the glittering generalities of the 
Hatti Sherif. It forbade all distinction between the fol- 
lowers of the two religions. All Christian subjects had 
hitherto been excluded from the ranks. It now opened to 
them not only military service, but attainment of the high- 
est grades. To this provision Mussulmans and Christians 
united in opposition. The former were unwilling to obey 
officers of the subject Christian nationalities or to serve 
with them in the troops. The latter preferred still to pay 
the exemption tax and had no wish to fight for a govern- 
ment they abhorred. 

Massacres at Djeddah (1858) and in Syria (1860). Euro- 
pean Intervention. — It is a peculiar fact that the Crimean 
War stimulated the hatred of the Turks for all foreign 
Christians, for the British and French even more than for 
the Russians. Their pride was stung on seeing the crushing 
superiority in the civilization and power of the Western 
nations. This sullen hatred was diffused throughout the 
empire and grew all the more intense, because they realized 



A.D. 1858-1861.] THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 641 

that those detested foreign Christians looked on them 
with contempt. 

At Djeddah, in Arabia (July 15, 1858), the wild exhor- 
tations of some dervishes excited a crowd of pilgrims to 
attack the foreigners. The consul of France and vice-con- 
sul of Great Britain were massacred while trying to protect 
their countrymen. The bombardment of the city by an 
Anglo-French squadron (July 25) and the hanging of ten 
of the murderers made only a sliglit impression. 

An explosion followed on a larger scale in Syria. The 
Druses, though comparatively quiet since 1845, were no 
less envenomed against the Christians. Khourshid Pasha, 
governor-general of Beirout, and Achmet Pasha, com- 
mander of the army of Arabistan, encouraged them to 
action. Speedily (May, 1860) the Lebanon and the neigh- 
boring country were drenched with blood. Greed and lust 
multiplied the bands of the fanatics. With every attendant 
horror entire villages were blotted out. The Bedouins of 
the desert joined hands with the Druses of the mountain. 
Damascus was as sanguinary as the Lebanon. Only the 
British and Prussian consulates were respected. The Otto- 
man troops were not behind in murder and pillage. It is 
impossible to tell how many thousands were slain or died 
of exposure. The Emir Abd-el-Kader, who for sixteen years 
had defended his country of Algeria against the French, 
was then living in Damascus. At peril of his life, with a 
band of followers, he protected as many Christian fugitives 
as he could and lavished his resources in their support. 

Europe shuddered at these atrocities. Lord Palmerston 
denounced them in Parliament. By a convention between 
Great Britain and France, which the Porte was obliged to 
approve, 6000 French troops were sent to Syria. They 
were potent arguments in favor of justice and order. Fuad 
Pasha, Ottoman Minister of Foreign Affairs, was given full 
authority to punish the criminals. Marshal Achmet Pasha 
was tried and shot. Khourshid Pasha was condemned to 
prison. Eighty-five Mussulmans on conviction were put 
to death. Such interference was effectual. The Lebanon 
became, and has continued to be, one of the most orderly 
and peaceful provinces of the empire. By decision of the 
great Powers it has since been ruled by a Christian gov- 
ernor. The French corps of occupation returned home in 
1861. 

2t 



642 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1861-1868. 

Sultan Abd-ul Aziz (1861-1876). —Sultan Abd-ul Mecljid 
died in June, 1861. His reign of twenty-two years was 
filled with good intentions without accomplishment. His 
brother, Sultan Abd-ul Aziz, who succeeded, was of stronger 
fibre. But kept in extreme seclusion, constantly under 
watch, he was as ignorant as a child of what went on in the 
Ottoman Empire or the outer world. On his accession he 
repeated all the customary glowing promises of reform. 
More extravagant even than his brother, his prodigality 
bordered on madness. Enormous sums were squandered 
in erecting palaces, of which he often tired before they 
were complete. His harem of 900 women was served by 
3000 attendants. Moustapha Fazyl Pasha, accountant gen- 
eral, in an interview with the Sultan hinted at the danger 
of national bankruptcy. He was exiled for his rashness. 
The machinery of government was kept in motion by two 
capable men, Euad Pasha and Ali Pasha. The latter was 
one of the ablest statesmen Turkey ever produced. Strictly 
honest, inaccessible to a bribe, he was moreover a tireless 
worker. Provincial rebellions and petty wars kept him 
constantly busy. 

The Insurrection of Crete (1866-1868). —During the last 
sixty years insurrection was the chronic condition of Crete. 
In 1866, as before in 1821, in 1841 and 1858, it assumed a 
more general and threatening form. Never were the 200,000 
Christians, who formed two-thirds of the population, more 
cruelly and more unjustly governed. Their complaints to 
Constantinople against their inhuman governor, Ismail 
Pasha, had only called out vague promises of improvement 
and a stern menace that they must submit to the officers of 
the Sultan. The Cretans got together a general assembly 
which declared them independent and pronounced for union 
with Greece. In the mountains of Sphakia, the western 
part of the island which never had been thoroughly sub- 
dued, they carried on a guerilla war. They routed detach- 
ment after detachment sent against them, forced the 
capitulation of Ismail Pasha and destroyed another Turkish 
division at Selino. Kiritli Pasha was sent as a dictator 
with 40,000 men. He fared no better, nor did Omar Pasha, 
the Turkish generalissimo, who replaced him. France, 
Italy, Prussia and Russia proposed the appointment of an 
international commission to administer the island. Great 
Britain and Austria opposed the proposition, and it was 



A.D. 1869.] THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 643 

rejected by the Sultan. War seemed immineut between 
Turkey and Greece, but the latter power was kept from 
action by France and Great Britain. From America gener- 
ous sums were sent to relieve the distress among the Cretan 
refugees, but Europe looked on in general apathy. By the 
employment of all its resources the Ottoman Empire at last 
quieted the insurrection for a time. At the convent of 
Arcadion the Cretans made their final stand. As the Turks 
crossed the last trench over the bodies of its last defenders, 
the Cretan women set fire to the powder in the vaults and 
blew up themselves and their conquerors. 

Opening of the Suez Canal (November 17, 1869). — This 
year the great enterprise of M. de Lesseps, though still in- 
complete, was so far advanced as to be passable by ships. 
Its various stages of construction had already occupied 
twenty years. By connecting the Red Sea and tlie Medi- 
terranean, it converted Africa into the vastest of the island 
continents. In prolonging its entire length 100 miles, over 
80,000,000 cubic yards of earth and rock had been removed. 
On it had been expended about $95,000,000. The only 
share of Turkey in the achievement was found in the fact 
that Ismail Pasha, viceroy of Egypt and the earnest pro- 
moter of the enterprise, was a vassal of the Sultan. At the 
formal opening almost all the maritime nations were rep- 
resented by warships, which passed through the canal in 
an imposing and memorable procession. The occasion was 
honored by the presence of European sovereigns, among 
them Empress Eugenie and the emperor of Austria- 
Hungary. 

Foreign Loans and Bankruptcy. — In 1854, during the 
exigencies of the Crimean War, the government obtained a 
foreign loan of £5,000,000. The next year it borrowed a 
like amount. Almost to its surprise it found foreign capi- 
talists not only willing but desirous to advance their money 
in return for its promise to pay. With that thoughtless- 
ness of the morrow which characterizes the Ottoman, it 
was of all others the easiest and most agreeable wa}^ to 
obtain a revenue. By March, 1865, the entire public debt 
amounted to about £36,700,000. 

Within the next ten years the total of foreign indebted- 
ness had grown to nearly if not quite £230,000,000. That 
is, it had increased in the proportion of about £20,000,000 
a year! To show for it there were only a few elegant but 



644 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1875-1876. 

useless edifices here and there and a fleet of equally useless 
ironclads, always anchored in a majestic semi-circle along 
the Bosphorus in front of the palace of the Sultan, not for 
his protection but for his amusement. It is impossible to 
describe the levity with which those enormous sums had 
been squandered. When the daughter of Sultan Abd-ul 
Medjid was married to'Ali Galib Pasha, over $7,000,000 
were expended on the trousseau of the bride. 

The day of reckoning came in less than a quarter of a 
century after that first loan of 1854. Up to 1875 the in- 
terest had always been promptly paid, even if a new loan 
was necessary to obtain the funds. At last even the in- 
terest could n,o longer be provided for. On October 6, 
1875, the grand vizir, Mahmoud Nedim Pasha, announced 
that the state was bankrupt. He considered himself in no 
small degree justified for partial repudiation by the fact 
that the nominal sums had by no means been received, the 
later loans especially being effected at ruinous rates, and 
that the interest already paid on certain loans was larger 
than the original amount. 

Death of Sultan Abd-ul Aziz. — The troubles in Herze- 
govina (1875), the massacres in Bulgaria (1875), and the 
war with Montenegro and Servia (1876-1877) make the last 
years in the reign of Sultan Abd-ul Aziz to be long remem- 
bered. Ali Pasha, Fuad Pasha, General Omar Pasha, all 
his tried statesmen and supporters, were dead. The grand 
vizir, Mahmoud Nedim Pasha, was the creature of General 
Ignatieff, the Russian ambassador. The empire was in a 
condition hardly better than anarchy from one end to the 
other. The long patience, even of the Mussulmans, was ex- 
hausted. The softas or theological students terrified the 
Sultan into the appointment of ministers of their choice. 
A few days later the Sheik-ul-Islam gave a fetva approving 
his deposition. Midhat Pasha, an energetic man whose 
government of several provinces had been signalized by 
violent reforms, headed a conspiracy. The Sultan was 
quietly dethroned (May 24, 1876). A few days later he 
was found dead. The court physicians declared he had 
committed suicide. 

He visited the International Exposition at Paris in 
1867, being the only Ottoman sovereign who in peaceful 
fashion had set foot in a foreign country. But he learned 
nothing in his travels and brought back only added aversion 



A.D. 1876-1877.] THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 645 

to Western ways. His one success was in humbling the 
viceroy of Egypt, his vassal, on whom he had previously 
bestowed the almost regal title of khedive. He compelled 
him to reduce his army, surrender his ironclads and abstain 
from exercising the attributes of sovereignty. It had been 
his lifelong ambition to assure the succession to his son, 
Yusuf Izeddin, thus setting aside the Ottoman custom, which 
vests the inheritance in the oldest member of a dynasty 
and not in direct descent. By his deposition all his careful 
plans were brought to naught. His nephew. Sultan Mourad 
V, was at once proclaimed. The excitement caused by the 
tragic death of his uncle and by the assassination of some of 
his ministers at a cabinet meeting unsettled his reason. 
He was removed by the sultan-maker, Midhat Pasha, and 
his brother. Sultan Abd-ul Hamid II, reigned in his stead. 

The Eeign of Sultan Abd-ul Hamid II (1876-1898). —No 
other Sultan in the Mosque of Eyoub ever girded on the 
sword of Osman — the Turkish equivalent of coronation — 
in national conditions so appalling. 

E-ebellion was rampant in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 
imminent in Arabia. Montenegro and Servia had declared 
war and the Turks believed that Europe, and certainly Eus- 
sia, were about to do the same. The horrors of Bulgarian 
massacres had shocked and for a time alienated the empire's 
most persistent friends. The civil and military service was 
everywhere in utter confusion. The prodigality of preced- 
ing reigns had impoverished the people and brought on 
bankruptcy, which made further foreign loans impossible. 
There was no money to pay the troops. The ironclads could 
not move for lack of coal. The young Turkey party, com- 
posed largely of Moslems who had lived abroad, not numer- 
ous but noisy, demanded thorough renovation of the empire. 
The vast majority of the Mussulmans, as bigoted as they 
were ignorant, denounced even the pretence of reform. To 
them Sultan Mahmoud and Sultan Abd-ul Med j id were little 
better than giaours. In their judgment the abandonment 
by recent Sultans of the principles and practice of early 
days was wholly responsible for national decline. Their 
fierce fanaticism was as dangerous as foreign attack. Par- 
tisans of the dead Abd-ul Aziz were plotting to enthrone his 
son, Yusuf Izeddin. Partisans of the crazy Mourad were 
plotting his restoration. Midhat had deposed two sultans. 
Two dethronements in four months had made the idea of 



646 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1876-1881. 

revolution grimly familiar. What Midliat Pasha had done 
twice he was capable of doing again. When Abd-ul Hamid 
ascended the throne in 1876 it was a common belief that he 
would not occupy it a year. 

In December the formal conference of ambassadors opened 
at Constantinople. The Ottomans were not allowed repre- 
sentation at the sessions. The very day the delegates as- 
sembled salvos of artillery hailed the proclamation of a 
Constitution by the Sultan. This Constitution was most 
comprehensive and liberal. It was based upon the equality 
of all men and the sanctity of individual rights. It intro- 
duced the representative system. There was to be a senate, 
named for life by the Sultan, and a chamber of deputies, 
holding office for four years. The system of election was 
by universal suffrage and ballot. There was to be one 
deputy for every 50,000 Ottoman "citizens." 

The Turks met the memorandum containing the definite 
propositions of the conference by counter propositions and 
pointed as a guarantee to their newly granted Constitution. 
"Few countries enjoy such a constitution as ours,'' said 
Midhat Pasha gravely to the ambassadors. The success of 
Turkish diplomacy during this century has been due to a 
simple and invariable policy. In any emergency by 
specious promises it has sought to gain time, and the time 
thus gained it has utilized in playing off the Powers against 
one another. The conference formulated an ultimatum. 
Mjdhat Pasha submitted this ultimatum to a national as- 
sembly of 180 Mussulman and sixty Christian notables. 
Only the one delegate, the head of the native Protestant 
community, dared vote for its acceptance. The other nota- 
bles declared that it was contrary to the Ottoman Constitu- 
tion and must hence be refused. Then the ambassadors 
quitted Constantinople, but dissensions had arisen among 
them and they were not in harmony as to the ultimatum 
they had proposed. The Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 
and its consequences are described in the chapter on Russia. 

The conclusion of the war did not bring internal peace 
to the broken empire. Soon tlie Albanians rebelled and 
murdered Mehemet Ali Pasha, who had been sent to make 
amicable arrangements with them (1881). The Arabs, who 
had always looked down on their Turkish masters and lost 
no opportunity to weaken their authority, gave constant 
trouble and were subdued at great cost. For a moment, on 



A.D. 1882-1897.] THE OTTOMAK EMPIRE 647 

tlie occupatioii of Egypt by the British (1882), the Sultan 
was on the point of declaring war against Great Britain, 
but more prudent counsels prevailed. The Armenian mas- 
sacres of 1894-1896, rivalling the atrocities of the time of 
the Greek revolution and exceeding in horror the massacres 
in Syria and Bulgaria, roused the indignation of the civil- 
ized world. But this time no foreign nation was ready to 
do more than exchange diplomatic notes and employ diplo- 
matic pressure. The promises of 1868 to Crete were habitu- 
ally ignored. The Cretan insurrections of 1877, 1885, 1887 
and 1889 were succeeded by what seemed a life-and-death 
struggle in 1895 and 1896. Again the government promised 
reforms, forwarded a specious programme and appointed a 
Christian governor. The Cretans despised pledges which 
had been violated so often and demanded annexation to 
Greece. The Greek government sent Prince George with a 
torpedo flotilla and Colonel Vassos with 1500 troops to the 
assistance of their brethren (February, 1897). Now a real 
concert of Europe was brought about, not to restrain des- 
potism, but to crush men fighting for liberty. The iron- 
clads of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain, 
Italy and Eussia blockaded Crete, landed a force of 3600 
men and bombarded the insurgents who had gained control 
of almost the whole island. The war of 1897 between 
Greece and Turkey was the result. 

At first Sultan Abd-nl Hamid II was only a phantom 
upon the throne. Were he really to reign, it was necessary 
to break the virtual dictatorship of Midhat Pasha, who was 
a tool of Great Britain as Mahmoud Nedim Pasha had been 
of Russia. Reports, skilfully put in circulation, and the 
arrogant bearing of the Pasha, sapped his popularity. 
Suddenly arrested at midnight (February, 1877) he was 
obliged to give up the seals of office and go at once into 
exile. Later on he was recalled and made governor of 
Smyrna. Accused of the murder of Sultan Abd-ul Aziz, 
he was tried and convicted. The sentence of death was 
remitted and he was banished to Arabia, where he died. 
All the men who had conspired against Sultan Abd-ul Aziz 
and Sultan Mourad V and all the prominent partisans of 
those sovereigns were gradually stripped of power. The 
Sultan took the entire administration upon himself. By 
a revolution, as silent as it was slow and effectual, all real 
authority was removed from the grand vizier and centred in 



648 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1876-1898. 

his own hands. The palace superseded the Porte. The 
cabinet officers became hardly more than the Sultan's sec- 
retaries, the two essentials for their continuance in office 
being ability and subservience. Professing no admiration 
for European institutions, he emphasized his headship of 
the Moslems as their caliph. The most personal of per- 
sonal governments ruled and still rules at Yildiz Kiosk. 
But inherent in it are all the radical and fatal evils of 
absolutism. 

" Laborious but ill-informed," the Sultan, though shutting 
himself in Oriental seclusion, has been successful in con- 
trolling or outwitting the foreign ambassadors who were in 
the habit of domineering over his predecessors. For a few 
years he seemed to incline to Prance; then to Great Britain 
during the days when Lord Dufferin and Sir William White 
were British ambassadors ; since 1891 to Russia. The ex- 
ample of frugality and economy, set by the Sultan, is in 
marked contrast to all past Ottoman history. Reorganized 
by German officers, the efficiency of the army has been 
greatly increased. The Ottoman Empire is to-day stronger 
and more formidable, despite its loss of territory, than it 
has been at any time since the battle of Navarino, seventy- 
one years ago. But the Ottoman parliament ended its brief 
existence with its second session (1880) and there is little 
discussion of "reforms." 



A.D. 1848.] THE BALKAN STATES 649 



XII 

THE BALKAN STATES 
(1848-1898) 

The Five States, Roumania, Montenegro, Servia, Bul- 
garia, Greece. — These have all been carved during the 
present century out of the Ottoman Empire. Montenegro 
indeed always asserted her independence, but was none the 
less reckoned a subject territory by the Sultan. Greece 
achieved national existence by the revolution which began 
in 1821 and lasted seven years. In 1848 the three other 
states were in different stages of subjection. Bulgaria was 
hardly more than a tradition. Her boundaries had been 
blotted out and her people utterly reduced when she was 
added to other Ottoman conquests in the fourteenth century. 
Servia was an autonomous province, with a native prince, 
but paying tribute and kept in check by Turkish garrisons. 
Roumania is the present name of what was then the two 
provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia, including all the Turk- 
ish possessions north of the Danube. All five were adher- 
ents of the Eastern Orthodox, or Greek Church, but were of 
different races. The Roumanians were the mixed descend- 
ants of Dacians and Romans, the Greeks were Hellenic, 
and the Montenegrins, Servians and Bulgarians were Slavs. 
Thus there were three ethnic layers, the northern or Latin, 
the central or Slavic, and the southern or Greek. Though 
partakers in the common distress, brought on by the civil 
and religious despotism under which they lived, they looked 
on one another with jealousy and aversion rather than sym- 
pathy and kindly feeling. 

Ronmania. — Moldavia and Wallachia, in 1848, were both 
under the tyrannical rule of hospodars, appointed by the 
Sultan. The shock of the French Revolution reached even 
the Black Sea. Both the provinces rose and drove out their 
governors. The Turks marched in from the south to put 
down the rebellion, whereupon the Russians entered from 



650 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848-1866. 

the east. War seemed inevitable between Turkey and Eus- 
sia. It was averted by the convention of Balta Liman, 
which stipulated that the hospodars in future should be 
named for seven years by the Sultan and Tsar conjointly, 
and that the provinces, while vassals of the Sultan, should 
enjoy the protection of the Tsar. Tranquillity existed until 
the Crimean War, after which, by the treaty of Paris, a 
collective guarantee of the great Powers was substituted 
for the Russian protectorate, and the provinces reverted to 
the control of the Sultan. A portion of Russian Bessarabia 
was annexed to Moldavia, so that the Russian frontier should 
nowhere touch the Danube. 

Disappointed in their hopes of independence, Moldavia 
and Wallachia were clamorous for union into a single state. 

Their desire was encouraged by France and Russia, but 
opposed by Turkey, Great Britain and Austria, who were 
unfavorable to any measure tending to increase the strength 
of the provinces. A plebiscite resulted in an almost unani- 
mous declaration for union. After tedious negotiations, 
occupying several years, the great Powers agreed that one 
central committee should be empowered to enact common 
laws for the two, but that otherwise they should exist apart, 
each choosing its own provincial assembly and prince. 
But in 1859 the two elected the same candidate, Colonel 
Alexander Couza, whom they proclaimed "Alexander I, 
Prince of Roumania." The Sultan interposed every objec- 
tion, but finally (1861) recognized him "for life," granting 
investiture, and receiving the same tribute as before. In 
1862 the two provincial assemblies fused in one common 
national assembly, at Bucharest. Thus, in defiance of 
diplomacy, union was achieved. 

The Roumanian nobles were so many petty despots, while 
the peasants possessed almost no civil rights. The wealth of 
the country was in the hands of numerous opulent monaster- 
ies. Couza abolished feudal privileges, proclaimed universal 
suffrage and confiscated the property of the monasteries to 
the advantage of the state. Thus the nobility and clergy 
became his deadly foes. The nobles, in return for an in- 
demnity, were obliged to abandon a large part of their 
lands, which was divided among the peasants. But by 
declaring tobacco a governmental monopoly he alienated 
popular support. His beneficent measures were mixed with 
tyranny. Surprised in his bedchamber by a band of con- 



A.D. 1866-1898.] THE BALKAN STATES 651 

spirators, he was forced to abdicate (February, 1866). Aban- 
doned by all, he Avent into exile. 

The Chambers chose Prince Philip, of Flanders, brother 
of the king of Belgium, as his successor. On his declina- 
tion a plebiscite of the whole country elected Prince Charles 
of Hohenzollern (April 20) . A European conference at Paris 
declared the election void, but Prince Charles was advised 
by Bismarck to ignore its decisions. Traversing Austria 
in disguise, he received an enthusiastic welcome at Bucha- 
rest (May 22). The Turks had watched the progress of 
events in Eoumania with anxiety, but had always been dis- 
suaded from action. The Powers had likewise confined 
themselves to formal expressions of dissatisfaction. This 
time Sultan Abd-ul Aziz determined on war. Omar Pasha 
massed a formidable army on the Danube. But the vic- 
tory gained at Sadowa by Prussia, of whom Charles was 
the proteg^, and the troubles in Crete, prevented interfer- 
ence. He was formally recognized as Prince of Roumania 
by both the Sultan and all Europe (October). His marriage 
with the Princess of Wied, in 1869, seemed to confirm his 
dynasty. 

On the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, 
Roumania proclaimed herself independent (May 21, 1877). 
The development of her army had been carefully pursued 
by her new ruler, and she was able to offer Russia valuable 
aid. At the siege of Plevna, where Prince Charles was 
commander-in-chief of the Russian forces, her troops dis- 
tinguished themselves for gallantry, and materially con- 
tributed to the capture of Osman Pasha and his entire 
command. In 1881 the representatives of the nation de- 
clared Roumania a kingdom, under Charles I as king. 
Disappointed of issue, his nephew, Prince Ferdinand, in 
1888, was decreed his successor, with the title of Prince of 
Roumania. Though Queen Elizabeth had given her hus- 
band no heir, her pronounced Roumanian sympathies and 
poj)ular Avays have materially strengthened his throne. 
Under her pseudonym of "Carmen Sylva," her stories and 
poems have added to the reputation of Roumania abroad. 
Save during one brief period of glorious war, the reign of 
Charles I has been devoted to the peaceful solution of in- 
ternal questions and to internal progress. 

The position of Roumania, midway between Russia and 
Austria-Hungary, upon the lower Danube, on the road to 



652 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848-1898. 

Constantinople, has given her a marked strategic impor- 
tance. To Hungary she is a constant menace. Over 
2,500,000 Roumanians are subjects of the Hungarian crown. 
To reunite them all under one flag is the ambition of " Rou- 
mania irredenta." 

Montenegro. — In 1848 the name Montenegro, or Czrna- 
gora, was applied to a territory of less that 1500 square 
miles, a mass of rocky and lofty mountains west of Albania, 
inhabited by 107,000 human beings. The history of the 
country has been one long, ferocious heroism. Such of the 
Servians as would not submit had, after the fatal battle of 
Kossova (1389), taken refuge in its fastnesses, and there 
maintained an invincible resistance to the Turks. Their 
ruler, the vladika, or prince bishop, had the right of appoint- 
ing his successor, whom he chose from among his nephews. 
He was aided in administration by a council of twelve per- 
sons chosen by himself. On the death in 1851 of Peter II, 
who had been an able warrior and statesman, his nephew, 
Danilo, became vladika. In the great charter of 1852 he 
divested himself of his episcopal functions, asserted his 
right to marry, and made the succession hereditary. Soon 
afterwards the Sultan sent Omar Pasha to attack him. 
Mirko, the elder brother of the prince, in a three months' 
campaign slew in battle 4500 Turks and captured 900 pris- 
oners. Again attacked in 1858 by vastly superior forces, 
the Montenegrins gained the decisive battle of Grahova, 
where more than 3000 Turks were killed. Two years after- 
wards Danilo was assassinated. Leaving no son, his nephew, 
Nicholas I, succeeded. Another war with the Turks (1862) 
was no less honorable to the mountaineers. 

Thus far every Montenegrin was an armed volunteer, little 
susceptible to military discipline and poorly armed. The 
fourth Turkish war in the space of the last fifty years began 
in 1876. Everywhere successful, though against desperate 
odds, the independence of Montenegro was acknowledged 
by the Sultan in 1878. In the preliminary treaty of San 
Stephano, Eussia obtained such concessions for the heroic 
little country as would have trebled its territory and doubled 
its population. Though these gains were largely reduced 
by the treaty of Berlin, it eventually acquired the port of 
Dulcigno on the Adriatic, with a seaboard of almost thirty 
miles. 

Prince Nicholas I is still on the throne. During his reign 



A.D. 1848-1869.] THE BALKAN STATES 653 

of thirty-eight years his country has made marked progress 
in civilization. Himself educated in Europe, he has ren- 
dered education compulsory, and carefully encouraged agri- 
culture among his warlike people. Tiie marriage of his 
daughter, Helena, to the Prince of Naples, the heir of the 
Italian throne, is supposed to insure Montenegro an ally 
against Austria-Hungary, who, far more than the Ottoman 
Empire, is the chief enemy of Montenegrin independence. 
Since the days of the Tsar Peter, a peculiar attachment has 
existed between Montenegro and Russia. This attachment 
has at no time been stronger than to-day. 

Servia. — The patriot swineherd, Kara G-eorge, gave to a 
part of Servia a political existence early in the present cen- 
tury. Defeated, he fled from the country, and the insurrec- 
tion was headed for fifteen years by Milosch Obrenovitch. 
Worn out by the persistence of the insurgents. Sultan 
Mahmoud (1830) erected the revolted territory into an 
autonomous hereditary principality, and appointed Milosch 
its governor. Kara George returned, but Milosch succeeded 
in having him assassinated. Since then the feuds of the 
rival Karageorgevitch and Obrenovitch families have been 
a main factor in Servian history. Alternately members of 
the two houses expelled each other from power until 1859, 
when Alexander Karageorgevitch was a second time deposed 
and Michael Obrenovitch a second time placed in control. 
Michael was assassinated in 1868. Alexander in his absence 
was declared guilty by the criminal court of complicity in 
the crime. 

None the less great progress had been made meanwhile 
in shaking off the Turkish yoke. During the Cretan trou- 
bles of 1867 the Sultan, to propitiate the Servians who 
threatened to join the Greeks, withdrew his garrison from 
the citadel of Belgrade. Michael had armed his people 
and imposed military service on all able-bodied men. He 
had also endeavored to introduce some civil reforms among 
his people, and had occasionally convoked the Skoupchtina, 
or legislative body. His wise measures were well seconded 
by M. Garashanine, who showed more ability than any 
minister whom Servia has produced. 

Milan, the successor of the murdered ruler, was only 
fourteen years of age. The regency of three persons, which 
ministered affairs during his minority, proceeded to pro- 
mulgate a liberal constitution (1869). While confiding all 



654 CONTEMP OR A R Y HIS TOR Y [a .d . 1869-1898. 

ordinary power conjointly to the 23rince and a Skoupchtina 
of 120 members, it provided for an extraordinary or great 
assembly of 480 members in cases of emergency. Prince 
Milan was declared of age in 1872. Though in consequence 
of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 the independence of 
Servia was acknowledged by the Sultan, and the state in 
1882 proclaimed itself a kingdom, his reign was tilled with 
disgrace and disaster. Nothing but the intervention of 
Russia saved Servia from destruction by the Turks in 1876. 
But the chief humiliation was received from the hands of 
the Bulgarians at Slivnitza (1885). This time she was de- 
livered from the consequences of a shameful defeat by the 
intervention of Austria. The scandalous conduct of the 
king toward Queen Natalie, who was idolized by the com- 
mon people, still further increased his unpopularity. Fi- 
nally he obtained a divorce of questionable validity (1888), 
which was annulled by both parties in 1894. 

The public debt had enormously increased in spite of 
excessive taxation. Radical measures to propitiate the 
masses, such as the granting (1888) of a still more demo- 
cratic constitution than that of 1869, did not allay the 
universal discontent. The choice seemed to lie between 
abdication and deposition. Milan chose the former. He 
appointed a regency and proclaimed his son Alexander, 
then a boy of twelve (1889). 

The young king has shown courage and energy. Before 
he was seventeen years old he arrested, at his own table, 
the regents who were to govern during his minority. The 
next day he declared himself of age and has since held the 
reins. In the following year, by a coup d'etat, he abolished 
the constitution of 1888 and restored that of 1869. He has 
also shown a desire for amicable relations with Bulgaria and 
Montenegro. 

Servia has for more than twenty years been tormented by 
the ambition to act the role of a Slavic Piedmont. But she 
has presented no Servian Cavour, nor has she shown such 
qualities in war or peace as to indicate her fitness for 
leadership. A large portion of old Servia is still under the 
Sultan, or included in the principality of Bulgaria. Mean- 
while the bitter contentions of the three parties, the radicals, 
the progressists and the liberals, waste her energies and 
paralyze her progress. 

Bulgaria. — The last fifty years have brought marvellous 



A.D. 1848-1876.] THE BALKAN STATES 655 

changes to Bulgaria. In 1848 there seemed no hope of 
political resurrection. Nowhere did the Turkish rule press 
more absolutely and cruelly, yet the diffusion of the Mus- 
sulmans all over the country, and its peculiar strategic 
features, rendered successful revolution unlikely, even if 
insurrection were attempted. Lost in a mass of nameless 
rayahs, many Bulgarians were ignorant of their own race 
and supposed themselves Greeks. Their ancient literature 
had been destroyed and schools had hardly begun to exist. 
Nor did they have that strong Eastern bond of union and 
guarantee of continued national existence which is found 
in the possession of a national church. Their church had 
been blotted out, and they were dependent upon the Greek 
patriarch at Constantinople. 

But here and there the people were stirring. Bulgarian 
revolutionary committees began to be formed across the 
Danube, in the Roumanian towns of Bucharest and Yassy. 
The bishops in Bulgaria were almost exclusively Greeks. 
A determined effort was made to confer their sees upon 
Bulgarians. The Turkish government was entreated to 
recognize the Bulgarian Church. After contention lasting 
twenty years, this project, obstinately fought against by 
the Greeks, was approved by the Porte (1870). A Bul- 
garian exarchate was created, but the exarch was required 
to reside at Constantinople. There had been no change of 
creed, but the Greek patriarch excommunicated all persons 
connected with the new religious organization. 

Sir Henry Bulwer, the British ambassador, looked with 
apprehension upon every indication of awakening life which 
might ultimately weaken the Ottoman government. On his 
suggestion over 500,000 wild Tartars and Circassians from 
the Crimea and the Caucasus were quartered in Bulgaria to 
keep the people in check (1859). Midhat Pasha governed 
the country four years. Under his astern but enlightened 
rule roads were constructed, agriculture protected and the 
general condition improved. But each amelioration only 
revealed to the Bulgarians how wretched was their lot. 

At last came the awful massacres of 1876. It was the 
time of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian insurrection. The 
Mussulman government and people were suspicious of 
the slightest movement of the Christians. Petty outbreaks 
convinced the panic-stricken grand vizir, Mahmoud Nedim 
Pasha, that all Bulgaria was rising. He let loose the Cir- 



656 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1876-1881. 

cassians and Bashi Bazouks to plunder and slaughter with- 
out restraint. For three months there was a carnival of 
death in the vain attempt to exterminate a people. Over 
20,000 persons were butchered. The consequence was the 
E-usso-Turkish war, in which on many fields Bulgarians 
fought like heroes. The treaty of San Stephano made 
Bulgaria a powerful state, stretching from the Danube to 
the aEgean. The treaty of Berlin greatly reduced its size, 
and by unnatural division cut it into parts : Bulgaria, north 
of the Balkans, and Eastern Koumelia on the south. The 
former, a vassal tributary state, was to elect its own prince, 
who should be confirmed by the Sultan with the assent of 
the Powers. The latter was to remain under the Sultan's 
direct control. He was to appoint over it a Christian 
governor for a term of five years, with the assent of the 
Powers. 

A Constitution was adopted at Tirnova by an assembly of 
notables (1879). It provided for a Sobranie, or legislative 
assembly, elected by popular vote. A voter must be thirty 
years of age and able to read and write. The prince was 
to be commander of the army. The ministers named by 
him were to be responsible to him only. Sophia was made 
the capital. The election of a prince was entrusted to an 
extraordinary or Grand Sobranie, which is convened only on 
special occasions. It chose Prince Alexander, of Batten- 
burg, then an officer in the Prussian army. He took the 
oath at Tirnova, on July 9, 1879, and the Russian army of 
occupation evacuated the country one week later. 

Thus Bulgaria had arisen from the tomb of centuries, 
and stood forth a state among the nations with a sovereign 
and Constitution of her choice. Her people had no experi- 
ence in the art of self-government, but their patience and 
practical common sense were to stand them in good stead. 
There was no proscription of Mussulmans in their midst, 
despite the vivid memory of recent atrocities. 

The overbearing arrogance of the Russians made the 
Bulgarians forget their great services. Russians crowded 
the higher offices of civil and military administration and 
treated the Bulgarians with contempt. The Russian diplo- 
matic agent, M. Hitrovo, acted like a master. The liberals, 
antagonists of Russia, obtained a large majority in the 
Sobranie and their leader, M. Zankoff, became prime min- 
ister. Prince Alexander, by a coup d'etat, suspended the 



A.D. 1881-1894.] THE BALKAN STATES 657 

Constitution (1881) and made the Russian general, Ernroth, 
prime minister. Two years afterwards he restored it and 
called Zankoff to power. 

By a sudden revolution in eastern Roumelia (September 
18, 1885) the governor, Gavril Pasha, was expelled, and 
the union of the two Bulgarias proclaimed. Great Britain 
approved the act. It was denounced by Russia, who re- 
called every Russian ofiicer in the Bulgarian army. Servia 
looked with a jealous eye on the creation of the Bulgarian 
principality. Its union with eastern Roumelia roused her 
to exasperation. Believing the moment opportune, while 
the troops of her rival were without superior officers, she 
declared war and crossed the frontier. The Bulgarians rose 
as one man. Alexander proved himself an able leader. 
The enemy was hurled back. Then followed the three 
days' battle of Slivnitza, the most glorious event in modern 
Bulgarian history. The Servian capital, Belgrade, was res- 
cued from capture only by the intervention of Austria. 

A miserable intrigue deposed and exiled the prince the 
following year. Recalled to the throne, he abdicated soon 
afterwards (September 7, 1886), through dread of the Tsar 
Alexander III, who was his personal enemy. The Tsar 
sent General Kaulbars to win back the friendship of the 
Bulgarians. The unwise and brutal conduct of the envoy 
incensed the people, until at last he and all the Russian 
consular agents withdrew. Finally the Grand Sobranie 
elected Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the grand- 
son of Louis Philippe. Russia was still hostile, so he could 
obtain recognition neither from the Sultan nor the Powers. 

For more than seven years after the deposition of Prince 
Alexander, M. Stambouloff, first as president of the regency 
and then as prime minister, was the real ruler. The domi- 
nant idea of his policy was the independence of Bulgaria, 
not only from Turkey, but from the diplomatic interference 
of Europe, and specially of Russia. His rule was vigorous 
and despotic, often violent and unjust, but never Avavering. 
His chief success was in securing from the Sultan the ap- 
pointment of Bulgarian bishops in Macedonia. But he 
wore out all his early popularity and became intolerable to 
the prince. An angry letter of resignation, the acceptance 
of which he did not anticipate, was the means of his fall 
(May 31, 1894). A year later he was assassinated in the 
street. Dr. Stoiloff, a highly educated and patriotic states- 
2u 



658 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1830-1862. 

man, a typical Bulgarian of the worthiest type, has been 
prime minister since 1894. Under him difficulties with 
foreign nations have been smoothed away, the prince has 
been recognized by the Sultan and the great Powers, and 
the country has tranquilly gone on in the path of progress. 

The principality does not include all the Bulgarians. 
Many are found on the west and south under the rule of 
Servia or Turkey. In Macedonia the majority of the in- 
habitants are Bulgarians, and the ultimate fate of that 
province is disputed by Bulgaria, Servia and Greece. 

Greece. — It was the misfortune of Greece that, after her 
emancipation from Turkey had been recognized (1830), she 
was compelled to organize her entire administration in ac- 
cordance with the exigencies of the great Powers, and with 
no regard to the wishes of her own people. Though desir- 
ing a republican form of government, she was forced to 
accept a monarchy, and Prince Otho, a Catholic and a 
Bavarian, was imposed as king (1833). For ten years he 
ruled as a foreign despot by means of a Bavarian ministry 
and Bavarian army. There was no legislative assembly 
and no constitution. On September 15, 1843, a peaceful 
revolution extorted the promise of a constitution and of a 
national Chamber, and compelled the retirement of the 
Bavarian Cabinet and the appointment of Mavrocordatos, a 
Greek, as X3rime minister. The Powers did not interfere. 

The constitutional assembly met in November. It elected 
as its president a revolutionary hero, Panoutsos Notaras, 
then 107 years old. On March 16, 1844, a liberal Constitu- 
tion received the royal signature. It provided for minis- 
terial responsibility, a Senate named by the king and a 
Chamber of Deputies, or Boule, elected by universal suffrage. 

The restoration of the Byzantine Empire has always been 
a Greek dream. When the Crimean War broke out, Greek 
enthusiasm believed the moment of realization near and 
l^repared to attack the Sultan. In consequence a British 
and French fleet blockaded the Piraeus. A sufficient force 
was sent on shore to overawe Athens. It occupied the 
country from May, 1854, to February, 1857. 

King Otho and his haughty and childless queen, Amelia, 
had never been liked by the Greeks and grew daily more 
unpopular. While they were absent on a pleasure trip in 
the ^gean a general insurrection broke out, the throne was 
declared vacant and a provisional government appointed 



A.D. 1862-1878.] THE BALKAN STATES 659 

(October, 1862). On their return the royal travellers were 
not allowed to come on shore and departed at once for 
Bavaria. Prince Wilhelm of Denmark was elected " King 
of the Hellenes," nominally by the national assembly, but 
really by the Powers (1863). If the Greeks were doomed 
to have a foreign king, no wiser choice could have been 
made. Great Britain marked her satisfaction by the ces- 
sion to Greece of the Ionian Islands, which she had held 
ever since the Napoleonic wars. The marriage of the young 
sovereign and of the Grand Duchess Olga, niece of the Tsar 
Alexander II, indicated the good-will of Russia. 

George I at once showed himself democratic in his man- 
ners and sympathies. The new Constitution of 1864, which 
received his full approval, was even more liberal than its 
predecessor of 1844. It abolished the senate and estab- 
lished entire freedom of the press. Parliamentary majorities 
have ever since determined the composition of the cabinet 
and the foreign policy. While modern Greece has possessed 
several statesmen of ability, the two most prominent have 
been MM. Tricoupis and Delyannis. During the seventeen 
years subsequent to 1881 they alternated with each other 
in the premiership, M. Tricoupis being prime minister four 
times and M. Delyannis three. 

The relations of Greece and Turkey have given rise to 
the most delicate and involved complications. The unsat- 
isfactory and unjust boundaries, assigned after the revolu- 
tion, left the majority of the Greeks still rayahs of the 
Sultan. Their blood had been lavished without reward. 
The bond between these rayahs and their emancipated kins- 
men has even grown stronger with time. Every disturbance 
on the mainland or in the islands has caused a sympathetic 
outburst among the free Greeks. But European diplomacy 
has been harder to deal with and more dreaded than the 
military strength of the Turks. 

During the Cretan insurrection of 1866-1868 the Greeks 
welcomed and cared for more than 50,000 Cretan refugees, 
and were only prevented by the interference of Erance and 
Great Britain from themselves taking up arms in behalf of 
their brethren. A similar pressure kept them quiet during 
the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, their army crossing the 
frontier only after the preliminary treaty of San Stephano 
had been signed. Erance, at the Congress of Berlin, urged 
the claim of Greece to rectify her frontiers, and the signa- 



660 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1878-1897. 

tory powers proposed the assignment to her of all Thessaly 
and the southern half of Epirus. Turkey skilfully evaded 
compliance, ceding only a fragment of Epirus and southern 
Thessaly (1881). 

The fifteen following years were in the main peaceful 
despite the heat of party politics. But ineffectual arma- 
ments against Turkey had been costly, and public works, 
such as the construction of railways and canals, destined to 
ultimately increase the wealth of the country, had drained 
its resources and exhausted its credit. Still commerce and 
agriculture advanced. Whatever change occurred in the 
general condition was for the better. 

Then began the saddest chapter in the story of modern 
Greece. In Crete the fight for liberty had again burst forth 
with fury. The again-repeated and familiar promises of 
reform were laughed at by the insurgents. On February 8, 
1897, when almost the whole island was in their possession, 
they proclaimed its union to Greece. The news came upon 
the Athenians like a spark upon gunpowder. The king 
despatched Prince George with a torpedo flotilla to Crete 
(February 10) and Colonel Vassos with 1500 men (February 
14). The Powers protested and occupied Canea, the Cretan 
capital. Their fleet bombarded the Greeks and Cretans 
whenever they came in range. In a joint note (March 2) 
they declared that " in present circumstances " Crete could 
not be annexed to Greece, but that it should be endowed 
" with an absolute autonomy " under the suzerainty of the 
Sultan. This declaration was satisfactory to neither Turk, 
Greek nor Cretan. More than 40,000 Cretan refugees had 
fled to the Piraeus and excited compassion. 

The Greek and Turkish troops approached the Thessalian 
frontier. Provoked by incursions, Turkey declared war 
April 17. The vastly superior number of her troops, their 
splendid discipline and the generalship of their commander, 
Edhem Pasha, decided the result in a three weeks' cam- 
paign. The Crown Prince Constantine, the commander of 
the Greeks, showed little courage or capacity. His small 
army, supplied only with enthusiasm, was as badly equipped 
as it was poorly led. The prime minister, M. Delyannis, 
resigned. His successor, M. Ralli, sued for peace (May 8). 
The conditions of the treaty were terrible for the van- 
quished. Greece was to withdraw her troops from Crete, 
to pay a war indemnity of $20,000,000 and to submit her 



A.D. 1897.] THE BALKAN STATES 661 

finances to international control. Her frontier was also to 
be rectified to Turkish advantage. It was understood that 
Crete was to enjoy an autonomous government "with 
reforms." 

Thus Greece had staked her existence and been tempo- 
rarily crushed. In 1854 or 1867 or 1878, or even in 1881, 
other conditions were more favorable, and she might have 
succeeded, but in 1897 she was hampered in every way, and 
the Ottomans given not only a free hand, but moral support 
by the concert of Europe. Roumania, Montenegro, Bulga- 
ria and Servia, who might also have risen against Turkey, 
were strictly enjoined to remain neutral, and the two latter 
states were rendered responsible to prevent outbreak in 
Macedonia. 

Yet it must be remembered that the course of the Powers 
was determined, partly, indeed, by hostility to Greek am- 
bition, but above all by a common dread of a general Euro- 
pean war. No conflagration spreads so fast as successful 
rebellion. Crete and Greece were sacrificed on the altar of 
an ignoble peace. 



662 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848-1898. 



XIII 

THE SMALLER EUROPEAN STATES 
(1848-1898) 

Denmark. — Frederick VII ascended the throne on Janu- 
ary 20, 1848. Soon after his accession he granted an auto- 
cratic Constitution. The Rigsdag, or Assembly, consisting 
of an upper and a lower Chamber, was to meet annually, 
and could not be prorogued till after it had sat two months. 
The upper Chamber, of sixty-six members, was appointed 
partly by the sovereign and partly by restricted ballot. The 
102 members of the lower Chamber were elected by suf- 
frage, each voter to be thirty years of age and of reputable 
character. The desire for uniformity led the king to apply 
the same constitution to Iceland, where the ancient Althing, 
or General Diet, after existing 870 years, had been abol- 
ished in 1800. The Icelanders fretted at the new system, 
refused to be made a mere royal province and stoutly in- 
sisted on maintaining their traditional local laws. After 
long discussion, most of the demands of the Icelanders were 
grudgingly granted in 1874. 

With Frederick VII, who died in 1863, the Danish 
dynasty became extinct. Christian IX, of the house of 
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gliicksburg, became king. 
Like his predecessor, he was confronted on his accession by 
a war over Schleswig and Holsteiii, which were conquered 
and held by the allied Prussians and Austrians. The in- 
ternal history of Denmark has been filled by the struggles 
of the conservatives and liberals. The former, supported 
by the privileged classes, are absolutist in tendency and 
care little for parliamentary government. The liberals, 
representing the vast majority of the people, wish to make 
their rights a fact. Its weakness has prevented Denmark 
from exercising political influence abroad. But the children 
of no other European sovereign have already occupied or 
expect to occupy so many thrones. Frederick, the prince 



A.D. 1848-1898.] THE SMALLER EUROPEAN STATES 663 

royal, is heir to the crown of Denmark. Prince Wilhelm, 
under the title of George I, is king of Greece. Princess 
Alexandra is the wife of the Prince of Wales and in the 
course of nature will be queen of Great Britain. Princess 
Marie Dagmar, as the wife of Alexander III, was Tsarina 
of Russia, and is the mother of the present Tsar Nicholas II. 

Sweden and Norway. — These two states, violently thrust 
together in 1814 after the overthrow of Napoleon, have 
their separate existence under one crown, each with its own 
Constitution, ministry, and two Chambers. For foreign 
affairs, however, there is but one minister, who is usually 
a Swede. The king resides at Stockholm, which outranks 
Christiania much as Sweden outranks Norway. In fact, the 
independence of Norway is nominal rather than real. This 
position of inferiority rankles in the less populous country, 
and furnishes the most prominent plank in the platform of 
the Norwegian radical party. In both countries the sys- 
tem of election is by restricted suffrage. The number of 
electors qualified to vote for members of even the lower 
house is in Norway about nine per cent, of the population, 
and in Sweden only about six per cent. 

Oscar I, the son of Charles XIV, better known as Mar- 
shal Bernadotte of Prance, acceded in 1844 and reigned 
fifteen years. His son, Charles XV, reigned from 1859 to 
1872, when he was succeeded by Oscar II, the present sov- 
ereign. He is distinguished as a man of learning and an 
accomplished orator in many languages. The two countries 
have taken small part in European politics during the last 
half century. In 1855 they joined the alliance against 
Russia, the hereditary enemy of Sweden. Instead of sub- 
siding, the anti-Swedish feeling in Norway and partiality 
for Denmark have grown stronger in the last five years. 
Nothing but the tact of Oscar II has thus far prevented war 
between the Norwegians and Swedes. 

Switzerland. — Despite diminutive size and small popu- 
lation, Switzerland, in political ideas and institutions, re- 
sembles the United States more than does any other foreign 
country. Its people have had long experience in self-gov- 
ernment. Their freedom has been gained by their own 
heroic efforts and not bestowed by foreigners. Their area, 
small as it is, has reached its present extent by successive 
admissions or by annexations of adjacent territory. 

The fact that the people are of three nationalities and 



664 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848-1898. 

languages, and that these three are geographically separate, 
French in the southwest and west, Italian in the south and 
German in the rest of the country, is an obstacle to effective 
union. A further obstacle is found in the second fact of 
their nearly equal division between Protestantism and 
Roman Catholicism, fifty-nine per cent being adherents 
of the former communion and forty per cent of the latter. 
These two religions are also drawn up on geographical 
lines, the central, or most ancient, and the southern can- 
tons being Catholic, while the western, northern and 
eastern cantons are Protestant. To these two facts are 
due most of their domestic troubles and civil wars. Since 
1848 there has been no political disturbance of any 
importance, except a royalist attempt in Neuchatel to 
overturn the government, and petty riots in the Italian 
canton of Ticino. 

But until 1848, though there was a Switzerland, there 
was no Swiss nation. An individual's rights were cantonal 
and not national. Men were citizens of Berne or Zurich or 
Uri or some other canton, but not of a common country. 
The salvation of the state and the assurance of its perma- 
nence came with the overthrow of the Sonderbund or Sepa- 
rate League of Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Lucerne, 
Freiburg and Valais in 1847. 

The radical, or national, party had triumphed. They be- 
stowed upon Switzerland the most precious gift in its his- 
tory, the Constitution of 1848. The men who framed it 
studied carefully the Constitution of the United States. In 
view of the difficulties with which they had to deal, there 
was no other political document which could be of aid. In 
fact, the fundamental proposition of the Swiss Constitution 
is a paraphrase of Article X in the Amendments to the 
American Constitution. The political life of the nation has 
since been summed up in the application and extension of 
its organic charter. The Federal Assembly, exercising leg- 
islative functions, has taken the place of the ancient power- 
less Diet. The executive power is centred in a Federal 
Council of seven members, elected by the Federal Assembly 
for three years. This Federal Assembly is modelled after 
the American Congress. It consists of a State Council, 
wherein two deputies from each canton represent cantonal 
sovereignty, and of a National Council of one deputy for 
every 20,000 inhabitants, representing popular sovereignty. 



A.D. 1848-1866.] THE SMALLER EUROPEAN STATES 665 

The Swiss president has a minimum of authority, holds 
office for only one year and cannot be reelected. 

This Constitution has been several times revised, always 
with a tendency to give more direct participation in affairs 
to the people. The most important modification is in the 
extension of the referendum, whereby the impulse to law- 
making is from below rather than from above, and where 
the decision as well as the initiative rests in the hands of 
the voters. 

If appropriate laws, industry and material prosperity 
assure the welfare of a people, it is easy to credit the boast 
of the Swiss that they are the best governed and the hap- 
piest nation in the world. 

Belgium. — The successful revolution of 1830 against 
Holland secured Belgian independence. By the treaty of 
London (November 15, 1831) Austria, France, Great Britain 
and Russia guaranteed the neutrality of the new state. 
The Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha had been already elected 
king of the Belgians by the National Assembly, and had as- 
cended the throne as Leopold I. But the sovereign of Hol- 
land did not recognize accomplished facts until 1839. The 
constitution of 1831 declared Belgium "a constitutional, 
representative and hereditary monarchy." Leopold II, 
the present ruler, succeeded on the death of his father 
(December 10, 1865). 

The foreign history of the country has been confined to 
apprehension that its integrity might be violated by France 
or Germany. On the separation of Holland and Belgium, 
the grand duchy of Luxemburg had been divided. One- 
third of the territory, the inhabitants of which were mostly 
Germans, continued to be the grand duchy and was united 
to Holland by a personal union, the sovereign of that coun- 
try being acknowledged as the grand duke. It continued 
however to make part of the German confederation. The 
remaining two-thirds, inhabited by a French speaking 
people, were assigned to Belgium. When Louis Napoleon 
became emperor, the Belgians feared that he would secure 
the cession of this territory, and perhaps the annexation of 
their entire kingdom to France. But it was in reference 
to the grand duchy of Luxemburg that Napoleon carried on 
his calamitous negotiations with Bismarck after the Prusso- 
Austrian campaign of 1866. The proposal of Count Beust 
that the grand duchy should be annexed to Belgium, who, 



666 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1866-1898. 

in turn, should cede certain territory on the south to France, 
was indignantly rejected by Leopold II. The conference 
of London (May 11, 1867) decided on the neutrality of the 
duchy and on the withdrawal of the Prussian garrison which 
held its capital. The French diplomatists assert that Bis- 
marck had previously proposed the incorporation of all Bel- 
gium with France. Though Belgium was strictly neutral 
in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, she and Holland 
were both alarmed at the possible rapacity of the conquerors. 
But there was no interference with either. 

By an international conference in 1885, Leopold II was 
made sovereign of the Congo Free State, which possesses 
an area of 900,000 square miles and 30,000,000 inhabitants. 
On August 2, 1889, by a formal will, he bequeathed to Bel- 
gium all his sovereign rights over it. By convention the 
right is recognized to Belgium to annex the state at any 
time after the year 1900. 

Belgium is the most densely populated and, in proportion 
to its size, the wealthiest country in Europe. Nowhere are 
political parties more sharply defined and political contests 
more fierce. For sixty years there has been presented the 
spectacle of a determined and never intermittent wrestle 
between the nearly equal forces of the " Catholics " and lib- 
erals. The latter are strongest in the great industrial cen- 
tres and the former in the other parts of the kingdom. By 
a peculiar compromise, or double victory, in 1893 the prin- 
cipal tenets of both parties were engrafted on the revised 
Constitution. The liberals secured the suffrage for every 
citizen twenty-five years of age. Hitherto less than 140,- 
000 persons had been qualified to vote. The Catholics, un- 
willing to accept the principle of absolute political equality, 
secured the right of casting two or even three votes to who- 
ever possessed certain educational or property qualifications. 
Before 1893 in a population of over 6,000,000 less than 
140,000 persons were allowed the vote. In consequence of 
the constitutional revision 1,350,000 electors were authorized 
to cast 2,066,000 votes. 

The new system resulted in an overwhelming victory for 
the Catholics in the elections of 1894. The effacement of 
the liberals gives fresh hope and strength to advancing 
socialism, and the old Catholic party itself is breaking up 
into two hostile factions. 

Holland or the Netherlands. — William II died in 1849. 



A.D. 1848-1898.] THE SMALLER EUROPEAN STATES 667 

William III reigned until 1890. His two sons, William 
and Alexander, passed away some time before his death. 
In 1879, when sixty-two years old, he married, as his second 
wife, the Princess Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, wlio 
was only twenty. Their daughter, Wilhelmina, succeeded 
at the age of ten, her mother taking the oath as regent. 
On August 31, 1898, this last descendant of William the 
Silent, on the completion of her eighteenth year, became 
sovereign in reality as well as in name. The formal coro- 
nation took place a week later. Probably the Dutch had 
never greeted any event with such enthusiasm as the for- 
mal accession of their fair girl-queen. 

The Constitution, granted the Netherlands in 1815, was 
revised in 1848 and 1887. The people, not being discon- 
tented with their government, were only slightly affected 
by the European commotions of 1848. In 1896 an Electoral 
Keform Act conferred the right to vote on all Dutchmen 
twenty -five years old. Legislative functions were vested 
conjointly in the sovereign and a Parliament consisting of 
an upper, or first, and lower, or second, Chambers. Party 
divisions in Holland have been mainly religious, and the 
burning question still is as to the introduction of religion 
in the schools. Of late years the Catholics, who constitute 
a little over a third of the population, have been inclined 
to unite with the conservatives, or orthodox Protestants, 
against the liberals, who oppose religious instruction in 
state institutions. 

Holland still retains extensive colonial possessions, es- 
pecially in the Pacific, with an area of 783,000 square miles 
and a population of 35,000,000. An insurrection of the 
people of Atjeh in Sumatra, which has gone on in intermit- 
tent fashion for twenty-five years, has been a heavy tax 
upon her resources. In 1862 she abolished slavery in the 
Dutch West Indies. Her East Indian possessions are in a 
far less satisfactory condition. 

On the death of William III, Adolf, Duke of Nassau, 
succeeded as Grand Duke of Luxemburg. 

The Five Smaller States and the Balkan States. — These 
five smaller states — Denmark, Sweden-Norway, Switzer- 
land, Belgium and Holland — are superior in population 
and territory as well as in civilization and material pros- 
perity, to the five Balkan states — Roumania, Montenegro, 
Servia, Bulgaria and Greece. But during the last fifty 



668 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [ a. d. 1848-1898. 

years all of them, except Denmark, have mercifully been 
spared the experience of war. They have given rise to few 
problems of international importance. They have been 
permitted with little or no interference from outside to 
work out their individual destiny. 

The Balkan states, on the other hand, although inhabited 
by peoples still more ancient, are only just born into politi- 
cal life. They have been of late the occasion and the 
theatre of many destructive wars. Their vicinage to Con- 
stantinople makes them still the battle-ground of European 
diplomacy. The uncertainties and complications of their 
future render them to-day of more vital interest than any 
other territory of equal extent within the limits of the 
continent. 



A.D. 1833-1851.] SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 669 



XIV 

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. 

Spain. Reign of Isabella II (1833-1868). —Ferdinand 
VII died in 1833, leaving two daughters, Isabella and Maria 
Louisa. Isabella, the elder, a child of three, became queen, 
and her mother Christina was appointed regent. The Car- 
list war distracted the country for seven years, until 1840. 
That same year Marshal Espartero, Duke of Victory, seized 
the power, forced Christina into exile and, a military dic- 
tator, installed himself as regent. A coalition, headed by 
his bitter enemy. General Narvaez, afterwards Duke of 
Valencia, drove him from the country. The queen was 
declared of age (1843). Espartero had been devoted to the 
British. Narvaez was no less so to the French party, which 
now became dominant. Louis Philippe secured the hand 
of Maria Louisa for his son, the Duke of Montpensier, and 
brought about the marriage of Queen Isabella to her cousin, 
Francis d'Assisi, who was equally diseased in mind and 
body (1846). By this arrangement, if Isabella died child- 
less, the throne would revert to her sister and to the son of 
Louis Philippe. No woman was ever more cruelly sacri- 
ficed than this young queen, married on her sixteenth birth- 
day. Whatever the later follies and even crimes of Isabella 
II, they were largely due to the heartless craft of a cold- 
blooded king. 

The revolutionary tidal wave of 1848 crossed the Pyre- 
nees. But isolated republican movements were quickly 
repressed. The camarilla, or clique of royal favorites, 
crowded Karvaez from office (1851). In March the govern- 
ment signed a concordat with the Pope, prohibiting the 
exercise of any religion other than the Koman Catholic, 
placing all education under the control of the clergy and 
submitting all publications to their censorship. The gov- 
ernment further proposed such amendments to the inopera- 
tive Constitution as would formally deprive the Cortes of its 
prerogatives and render the sovereign absolute. These 



670 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1851-1868. 

amendments were snperfiuous, but even any semblance of 
liberty was to be effaced. The army and the workmen of 
the large cities combined in successful revolution (July, 
1854). For two years Espartero and Marshal O'Donnell, 
minister of war, directed affairs and followed a more liberal 
policy. Then came two years of clerical reaction. O'Don- 
nell had founded the Liberal Union, recruited among the 
advocates of mild reform or opponents of absolute despot- 
ism. It carried him into power (1858) and sustained him 
as prime minister until 1863. He sought to divert attention 
from domestic troubles to foreign affairs. Thus he invaded 
Morocco (1860), joined Napoleon and Great Britain in the 
Mexican expedition (1861), attempted the overthrow of the 
Dominican Kepublic (1861-1865) and began a senseless war 
against Peru (1863-1866). Most of these enterprises ended 
in utter failure, unaccompanied by glory and enormously 
increasing the national debt. 

O'Donnell was replaced by Narvaez. The queen surren- 
dered herself entirely to priests and favorites. The darkest 
days of absolutism and bigotry returned. Spanish Protes- 
tants were condemned to the galleys for no other crime than 
their faith. All newspaper articles were to be submitted 
to the censor before publication. The Cortes passed a law 
that any person on suspicion could be arrested and impris- 
oned. Meanwhile discontent and indignation were seething 
all over Spain. Packing the prisons to overflowing could 
not drown the general complaint. Yet none were so blind 
and deaf as the queen and her counsellors. ISTarvaez was 
able to terrify the opposition, dissolve the Cortes and expel 
Marshal Serrano, the president of the Senate. Narvaez 
was merciless and strong, but he died (April 23, 1868) and 
his successor, Gonzales Bravo, though merciless was weak. 

The Revolution (1868). — The three persecuted parties, 
the progressists, unionists and democrats, coalesced. The 
Marshals Serrano and Prim issued a pronunciamento against 
an intolerable government. Then came the crash in one 
mad, universal upheaval. Hardly an arm was raised in 
behalf of the queen, who fled to France (September 30, 
1868). 

Political Experiments (1868-1875). — During the succeed- 
ing eight years there were few political experiences which 
the unhappy country did not endure. During the trial of 
each experiment its opponents did their utmost, by noisy 



A.D. 18G8-1876.] SPAKN- AND PORTUGAL 671 

demonstration or secret plot, to make it a failure. At first 
the dual dictators, Marshal Serrano and Marshal Prim, were 
the one, president of the council and commander of the 
army, and the other, minister of war. The Cortes met 
(February 12, 1869) and proclaimed a Constitution, the sup- 
posed panacea for every evil (June 5). A less number of 
deputies were opposed to a liberal monarchy than to any 
other system, so the Constitution was drawn up in that 
sense. 

Marshal Serrano was made regent (June 16, 1869) and 
devoted himself to finding a king. Among other princes 
who declined the proffered crown was Leopold, a Hohen- 
zollern prince, whose supposed candidacy furnished the 
occasion of the Franco-Prussian war. Prince Amadeo, 
Duke of Aosta, son of Victor Emmanuel, gave a favorable 
answer. He was elected by a majority of the Cortes (No- 
vember 15, 1870). The very day he landed at Barcelona 
(December 28) Marshal Prim, the minister of war, was 
murdered at Madrid. The assassins lodged eight bullets 
in his body. Amadeo was crowned and remained in Spain 
for two years. He did his best to rule well, but the clergy, 
the nobles and the republicans opposed him at every step 
and offered him all possible insult. The Carlist war broke 
out again with fresh fury, under another Don Carlos, grand- 
son of the old pretender (1872). Disheartened and dis- 
gusted, Amadeo abdicated (February 11, 1873). The next 
day the Cortes declared the republic. Months of wrangling 
among the republican factions resulted in the proclamation 
of Senor Castelar as president with dictatorial powers. He 
had been professor of philosophy at the University of 
Madrid. He was an orator, a patriot and a statesman, but 
he could not rule Spain. He resigned (January 2, 1874). 
At once General Pavia, at the head of the army, expelled 
the Cortes and made Marshal Serrano military dictator. 
Marshal Campos proclaimed the restoration of the Bourbon 
dynasty in the person of Alphonso, the son of the deposed 
queen (December 29, 1874). This measure was supported 
by the general sentiment. Marshal Serrano made no oppo- 
sition and Alphonso XII returned from England, where he 
had been a student in the Koyal Military Academy, and 
ascended the throne. 

Reign of Alphonso XII (1875-1885). —The present Con- 
stitution was proclaimed on June 30, 1876. The political 



672 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1876-1885. 

liberties it secures are large in appearance. But ambiguous 
or qualifying phrases make it a liberal Constitution hardly- 
more than in name, and place the reality of power in the 
hands of the sovereign, the executive. Legislative functions 
are exercised by the Cortes, which consists of a Senate and 
Congress of equal authority. The Senate is composed of sen- 
ators " in their own right," — members of the royal family, 
grandees enjoying an annual income of over f 12,000, cap- 
tain-generals, admirals, archbishops and presidents of the 
supreme councils and courts — of senators named for life 
by the sovereign and of 180 senators elected by privileged 
bodies. The entire number at no time can exceed 3G0. 
The Congress of 431 deputies is elected by universal suffrage. 
By the law of June 26, 1890, all male Spaniards twenty- 
five years of age, except certain disqualified persons, are 
allowed to vote. The Cortes meets annually, and may at 
any time be suspended or dissolved. In the latter case a 
new Cortes must sit within three months. The Constitution 
declares Roman Catholicism the religion of the state, but 
no person can be molested for his private opinions or for 
the exercise of his own faith. At the same time no public- 
ity of celebration or announcement, such as a notice upon 
the walls, is allowed to other communions. 

The Carlist war was entirely suppressed. Estella, the 
headquarters of insurrection, surrendered (February 19, 
1876) and Don Carlos fled to France. The Carlist party 
none the less exists to this day. His partisans were re- 
cruited among the mountains of the Basque and Navarrese 
provinces, which still retained their fueros, or special privi- 
leges, such as exemption from imposts and from military 
service. These fueros, which fcAV preceding governments 
had dared to touch, were now formally abolished by vote of 
the Cortes (July 21). Another civil war was necessary to 
carry the vote into effect. 

The disorder elsewhere began to diminish. The Carlists 
for a time were harmless. The republicans broke up into 
cliques or, under the lead of Castelar, rallied to the support 
of the throne. Two monarchist parties, the conservatives 
and the liberals, emerged from the political chaos. The 
former was led by Canovas del Castillo and the latter by 
Sagasta. One or the other of these two statesmen has been 
at the head of Spanish affairs since 1874, seven times suc- 
ceeding each other as prime minister. 



A.D. 1885-1896.] SPAIN- AND PORTUGAL 673 

Reign of Alphonso XIII. Regency of Queen Christina 

(1885- ). — Alphonso XII died in his twenty -eight! i year 
(November 25, 1885). His daughter, Maria de las Mer- 
cedes, would have succeeded had not the birth of a posthu- 
mous brother, Alphonso XIII (May 17, 1886) deprived her 
of the crown. The queen dowager, Christina, an arch- 
duchess of Austria, had been declared regent. A devoted 
wife, her whole life since the death of her husband has been 
consecrated to her son. If the young prince ever sits upon 
the throne, it will be due to his mother's sagacity and de- 
votion. Nor is it strange if, in the effort to make him king, 
dynastic interests have sometimes outweighed the interests 
of Spain. 

The queen confided the direction of affairs to Senor Sa- 
gasta, and indicated her preference for a liberal policy. 
The financial situation gave most concern. There was 
an ever-growing deficit, but any attempt to curtail always 
provoked fierce opposition. The socialists and anarchists 
redoubled their activity. At Xeres the latter tried to seize 
the town, and at Madrid to blow up the palace of the Cortes. 
The troubles at Barcelona could only be put down by martial 
law (1892). Meanwhile the four hundredth anniversary of 
the discovery of America was celebrated with enthusiasm all 
over the country, but riots at Madrid ended the festivals. 
The one need was money. One day the mayor of the capital 
was to pay 16,000,000 pesetas. There were only 769,000 in 
the treasury. At Barcelona during a review an anarchist 
bomb severely wounded Marshal Campos, the commander- 
in-chief, and killed some of his staff, and at the theatre 
another bomb killed twenty spectators and wounded many 
more (1893). An insult from the Moors suddenly engrossed 
attention. Morocco escaped war only by agreeing to pay an 
indemnity of 20,000,000 pesetas. Though smuggling was 
openly carried on, proposals to lower the tariff brought the 
country to the brink of revolution. Oflicers attacked the 
liberal newspapers and destroyed the presses. Catalonia 
rose in revolt. The republicans demanded the deposition 
of the dynasty. At the end of his resources, kSagasta re- 
signed. Canovas formed a cabinet (March 22, 1895). 

Cuba. — The chronic insurrection in Cuba had assumed 
alarming proportions. In the mind of the new prime min- 
ister, the Cuban question dwarfed all other problems with 
which he had to deal. He demanded an unlimited credit. 
2x 



674 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1895-1897. 

The army of General Gallega, commander of the Spanish 
troops in the island, though often reenforced, had been hor- 
ribly decimated by yellow fever. Marshal Campos, consid- 
ered the ablest soldier in Spain, was appointed to lead a 
new expedition. He selected with care 200 officers and 7000 
men. General Valdez, director of the military school at 
Madrid, was his chief of staff. He sailed on April 2, 1895. 

During the next two years and a half, though riots, re- 
bellions and hideous anarchist outrages went on in Spain 
and the state of the finances grew constantly more appall- 
ing, Cuba filled the political horizon. Insurrection in the 
Philippines only diverted partial attention to the East. 
Had Cuba been, like Crete, an island in the Mediterranean 
Sea, Spain would have felt less concern. Its nearness to 
the United States rather than apprehension of the insur- 
gents was the ground of her anxiety. 

The hopes entertained of Marshal Campos were not real- 
ized. He was replaced (January 17, 1896) by Lieutenant- 
General Weyler, whose former cruelties in Cuba and 
Catalonia had given him a sinister reputation. This ap- 
pointment roused outspoken indignation in the United 
States. Spain, however, regarded all expressions of Ameri- 
can sympathy for the inhabitants of the island as insincere 
and prompted by selfish motives. While dreading inter- 
vention she took no efficient measures to remove the abuses 
on which intervention might be based. Nor was she likely 
to give a colony a much better administration than her own 
people enjoyed at home. The ministry however announced 
certain unsatisfactory reforms (February 6, 1897), of which 
the most prominent was the grant of a kind of autonomy to 
Cuba; but these reforms were to be applied only after the 
island was tranquil. The prime minister, Seiior Canovas, 
was assassinated in broad daylight by an anarchist (August 
8, 1897), and his lifelong rival, Senor Sagasta, took office. 

General Weyler' s policy of terrorism had proved even 
less effective than Marshal Campos' policy of pacification. 
Even the Spaniards denounced him. Formal communica- 
tions from the American government (September 19 and 
October 5) increased the gravity of the situation. General 
Weyler was recalled and General Blanco appointed in his 
stead (October 9). A radical change in policy, with full 
autonomy for Cuba, was attempted. It was too late. 
Events had marched beyond the control of statesmanship 



A.D. 1897-1898.] SPAI]^ AND PORTUGAL 675 

or diplomacy. An indiscreet letter of the Spanish minis- 
ter at Washington, Seilor de Lome, caused his resignation 
(February 8, 1898). The American battleship Maine was 
blown up in the harbor of Havana (February 15) with the 
loss of 250 seamen and two officers. Common* opinion 
attributed the catastrophe to the Spanish officials. In the 
United States the growing sentiment in favor of interven- 
tion could no longer be repressed. 

Pope Leo III offered to mediate between the Cuban 
insurgents and the mother country (April 4). The six 
European Powers presented a joint note to President 
McKinley in the interests of peace (April 7). On April 20 
President McKinley signed a resolution of Congress recog- 
nizing the independence of Cuba. The same day he sent 
an ultimatum to Spain, but before it could be delivered 
the Spanish government notified the American minister, 
General Woodford, that diplomatic relations with the 
United States were at an end. War had begun. 

After an unbroken series of defeats, M. Cambon, the 
French ambassador at Washington, in behalf of Sj)ain, sued 
for peace (July 20). The peace protocol was signed at 
Washington (August 12). Spain relinquished all sover- 
eignty over Cuba, ceded Porto Rico and all her possessions 
in the West Indies, and whatever island in the Ladrones 
the United States should select, assented to the occupation 
of Manila, — bay, harbor and city, — leaving to the treaty 
hereafter to be signed all matters relating to the Philip- 
pines, and agreed to immediately evacuate the West Indies. 
Both governments were to suspend hostilities as soon as the 
protocol was signed. Five commissioners from each nation, 
no later than October 1, were to conclude the definite treaty 
of peace. 

Thus Spain departed from the hemisphere which she re- 
vealed to the world 406 years before. The news of peace 
was received with satisfaction by her exhausted people. 
She has now to concern herself with domestic affairs, but 
tranquillity is not the normal condition of the Iberian 
peninsula. 

Portugal. — Doiia Maria da Gloria II died in 1853. Her 
father, Pedro I of Brazil, had abdicated the Brazilian throne 
that he might devote his life to placing the Portuguese 
crown securely upon her head. Soon after expelling the 
usurper, Dom Miguel, Dom Pedro died (1834). The young 



676 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848-1898. 

queen, a girl of fifteen, was left in a position of extreme 
difficulty. The country was in a condition hardly better 
than anarchy, and was threatened on one side by Great 
Britain and on the other by Spain. The great mass of the 
people were indifferent to politics, either domestic or for- 
eign, but petty chiefs, who could seldom muster a thousand 
followers, kept the kingdom in continual turmoil. They 
veiled their pretensions under devotion to the liberal Con- 
stitution of 1812 or the democratic Constitution of 1822 or 
the absolutist Charter of 1826. But it is hard to discern in 
the machinations of progressists or septembrists or chartists 
anything higher than the eagerness of men out of power 
to dispossess those who held it and to obtain it for them- 
selves. 

Maria da Gloria was succeeded by her son, Pedro V. 
Since he was a minor his father, Ferdinand, Duke of Saxe- 
Coburg-Gotha, acted as regent. Throughout this reign pes- 
tilence ravaged the kingdom. The young king, who had 
become of age in 1855, devoted himself to the welfare of 
his people, and refused to leave his plague-stricken capital. 
He died of cholera in 1861, as did also his brothers, Ferdi- 
nand and John. The throne was left to their brother Luiz. 
With him the shattered kingdom enjoyed at last a peaceful 
and prosperous reign. His death (October 9, 1889) caused 
profound grief all over the country. He had married Maria 
Pia, the daughter of Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy. 
Their son, Carlos I, is the present king of Portugal. 

Ko European dynasty is more deservedly esteemed and 
loved by its subjects than the Portuguese house of Braganza. 
iSTowhere is the stiffness of royal etiquette more relaxed, 
and nowhere are the relations of sovereign and people more 
familiar. 

At the same time the condition of the kingdom is unsat- 
isfactory. A naturally rich country is impoverished and 
bankrupt. The expenditure exceeds the revenue. It has 
been necessary to repress the anarchists with a stern hand. 
The 800,000 square miles of colonies, some of them dating 
from the proud days of the nation, are a burden rather than 
a source of income, and have several times involved troubles 
with other states. The army weighs heavily on a population 
of less than 5,000,000. But yet Portugal is in a far less 
unhappy state than fifty years ago. 

The constitutional Charter of 1826 is still the fundamental 



A.D. 1898.] SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 677 

law. It has been modified at various times, lastly in 1895. 
Careful not to confound administrative functions, it enu- 
merates them distinctly as the legislative, executive and 
judicial, and places above them the moderative, or the royal, 
power. Its strength is found in the sagacity of the sover- 
eign and in the attachment of the people to the dynasty. 



678 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848. 



XV 

GREAT BRITAIN 

The British Empire. — The sovereign of the British Em- 
pire bears the title of " Queen of the United Kingdom of 
Great Britain and Ireland, and of its Colonies and Depend- 
encies in Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Oceania." 
The immensity of this title is bewildering. But it affords 
only a faint indication of the stupendous fact that the Brit- 
ish sovereign reigns not only over the most enormous empire 
the world ever saw, but over one vaster than the Babylo- 
nian, Persian, Macedonian and Eoman empires of Nebu- 
chadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander and Augustus Cifisar united. 
Its entire territory amounts to over 12,000,000 square miles, 
almost a quarter of the total land surface of the globe. Its 
inhabitants, subjects of the queen, number 390,000,000 
human beings, more than a fourth of all mankind. Its pre- 
eminence upon the sea is even greater than upon the land. 
Its merchant navy has a tonnage of 13, 641, 000 tons, exceed- 
ing by 3, 940, 000 tons the tonnage of all the merchant fleets 
of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and 
the United States combined. So the British seamen are 
not far wrong in regarding every ocean as a British lake. 

That one little island, less than 90,000 square miles in 
area, on the western verge of Europe, has been able by its 
brain and enterprise to exert and secure such unparalleled 
and world-wide dominion is in itself the most astounding 
fact of modern history. 

British interests, unlike those of any other people, are 
universal. It may be said that there is no point on the 
earth's surface that in some way does not touch Great Brit- 
ain. In this sketch of the years between 1848 and 1898 
nothing will be attempted beyond the outline of the most 
important facts. 

Great Britain in 1848. — Queen Victoria had sat upon the 
throne since June 30, 1837. The two great Whigs were in 
office, Lord iiussell as prime minister, and Lord Palmer- 



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A.D. 1848-1851.] GREAT BRITAIN 679 

ston as secretary of foreign affairs. It was the time of 
"unfulfilled revolutions." The chartist party, which had 
carried on agitation since 1832, went to pieces in a miser- 
able fiasco (April 10). But its chief tenets, manhood suf- 
frage, vote by ballot, annual Parliaments, eligibility to the 
House of Commons, irrespective of property qualification, 
and payment of members, have already been accepted, or 
seem about to be accepted, as laws of the land. The Young 
Ireland party attempted armed revolution. Its leaders were 
arrested and sentenced, after trial, to transportation. But 
the Irish question remained to embarrass legislation 
through the remainder of the century and to force a grad- 
ual solution. 

Repeal of the Navigation Laws (1849). — These laws were 
enacted in the days of Cromwell (1651). They were de- 
signed to cripple Holland, then the chief carrying power, 
and to develop English shipping. They prohibited the 
importation into England, Ireland or any English posses- 
sion, of merchandise from either Asia, Africa or America, 
except in English built ships, commanded by Englishmen 
and manned by crews three-fourths of whom must be Eng- 
lish. From Europe oo goods could be imported except 
under the same conditions or in ships of the country where 
those goods were produced. Under these laws Holland had 
been crippled and the mastery of the seas secured to Eng- 
land. They had been gradually modified at various times. 
But they had become no longer necessary. Nevertheless 
their abolition encountered determined opposition. 

The Great Exhibition (1851). — Since then there have been 
many universal or international exhibitions, notably at 
Paris (1867), Vienna (1873), Philadelphia (1876), Paris 
(1878 and 1889), Chicago (1893), but that at the Crystal 
Palace in Hyde Park was unique, inasmuch as it was the 
first. Its inception was due to Prince Albert, the husband 
of Queen Victoria. The mere proposal to exhibit goods of 
foreign production and to invite foreigners to England en- 
countered a storm of vituperation and abuse. The splendid 
edifice of iron and glass was itself the most fascinating part 
of a wonderful display. Over 30,000 visitors were present 
at the opening (May 1, 1851). The time chosen for the 
exhibition was most propitious, a sort of interim between 
the revolutionary storms of 1848 and the outbreak of the 
Crimean War. The Crystal Palace at Sydenham, erected 



680 CON TEMP OR A R Y HIS TOR Y [a .d . 1851-1855. 

(1854) from the materials used in the Palace of the Great 
Exhibition, now affords some slight conception of how im- 
posing was the structure in which the nations for the first 
time met in peaceful and beneficent rivalry. 

The Part of Great Britain in the Crimean War (1853- 
1857). — Various causes led Great Britain to participate in 
this war. The chief was dread of Russian expansion. It 
is the only war with a European state in which the empire 
has engaged since 1815 down to the ]3resent time. The 
country could well be proud of the invariable pluck dis- 
played by the coinmon soldiers at Alma, Balaklava and 
Inkerman. The Crimean campaign gave the world the in- 
spiration derived from the deeds and name of Miss Florence 
Nightingale and directly contributed to the foundation of 
the Red Cross at Geneva in 1863. But in every other 
respect it brought a terrible disillusion to the British people. 

The empire, almost omnipotent upon the water, found it- 
self almost impotent against a civilized enemy on the land. 
The generals were incapable and sick. Confusion, disorder 
and fraud prevailed everywhere. Abundant stores had been 
paid for and shipped, but the soldiers were Avithout food 
and their horses without hay. Whoie regiments were with- 
out shoes. Immense quantities of boots arrived, but were 
found to be all for the left foot. Medical and surgical sup- 
plies were always at the wrong place, and the wounded and 
cholera-stricken received no care. Most galling was the 
superior condition of the French. But their allies were 
generous and provisions were constantly sent to the British 
from the French camp. 

Even on their own dominion, the water, there had been 
failure. Amid exuberant demonstrations Sir Charles 
Napier, with a magnificent fleet, had sailed to attack Cron- 
stadt, but, without accomplishing anything, had been forced 
to return. 

As the state of affairs in the Crimea became gradually 
known in England, there was an outburst of popular rage. 
Mr. Roebuck in the House of Commons introduced a motion 
to investigate the condition of the army and the conduct of 
the War Department. The government counted on its nor- 
mal majority in a docile Parliament. It vigorously opposed 
the motion, which was none the less carried by a majority 
of 157. Indignation had proved itself stronger than party 
ties (January 31, 1855). 



A.D. 1855-1857.] GREAT BRITAIN 681 

The energetic Lord Palmerston became prime minister. 
At once he despatched a sanitary commission to the Crimea 
and revolutionized the commissary department. The Brit- 
ish were more ready for war the day it ended than they had 
been at any preceding time. But Britain had learned a 
bitter lesson. She set herself to the reform of her military 
system. Probably her grave errors in that war she will 
never repeat. 

Wars with Persia (1857) and China (1857-1860). —The 
Persian war was quickly finished. The Shah's army was 
beaten at Koushaub and most of his southern ports occu- 
pied. He obtained peace on condition of evacuating Herat 
in Afghanistan, which he had seized. 

The Chinese war was caused by the overbearing policy 
of Lord Palmerston. The cooperation of France was easily 
obtained, as she had an outstanding claim against the Chi- 
nese. Canton was captured (December, 1857). By the 
treaty of Tien Tsin (June, 1858) China agreed to pay the 
expenses of the war, to no longer apply the term "barba- 
rian " to European residents and to allow British and French 
subjects a certain degree of access to the interior. Again 
troubles broke out (1859), whereupon the allies stormed 
Pekin, spent two days in burning the summer palace and 
forced China to accept their terms. This time she was to 
pay a main indemnity of $20,000,000, with other minor 
indemnities, to accept a British envoy at Pekin and to 
apologize for fighting at all. The vandalism of the 
allies in these expeditions was a disgrace to Western 
civilization. 

The Indian Mutiny (1857-1858). —Many causes have 
been assigned for the Indian mutiny. The all-sufficient 
cause is to be found in the detestation which the natives 
entertained for foreign rule, and in their belief that at last 
the opportunity had come to shake it off. India was not 
then a possession of the British crown, but of the East India 
Company. Chartered in 1600 with a capital of £68,000, 
that company had rapidly swollen until, in 1857, it con- 
trolled a territory and a population many-fold larger than 
the territory and population of the British Islands. Its 
authority was maintained by a large standing army, mainly 
composed of sepoys, or Mussulman or Hindu natives, but 
in part of British troops, and commanded by British officers. 
In 1857 many of the European soldiers had been withdrawn 



682 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.b. 1857-1861. 

and the sepoys were left in dangerously large proportion. 
The latter were discontented and sullen. Mutinies were 
frequent, but had been always put down. Then a rumor 
spread among the troops that their new cartridges had been 
smeared with swine's fat, a defilement to the Mussulman, 
and with cow's fat, a profanation to the Hindoo. The cav- 
alry regiment at Meerut mutinied (May 10). Insurrection 
flooded northern India like a volcanic eruption. It was 
not a concerted movement. It did not embrace all India. 
But it put in peril everything that Englishmen had acquired 
in the peninsula during 250 years. It revealed unsurpassed 
heroism among the British, both men and women, and made 
the names of Lieutenant Willoughby, General Havelock 
and many other British officers immortal. On the tomb of 
Sir Henry Lawrence, who was slain during the siege of 
Lucknow, the following words were engraved, " Here lies 
Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty." The glorious 
epitaph would have applied no less well to hundreds of men 
and women who died during that awful time. 

During their brief day of power, the sepoys had inflicted 
every conceivable horror upon their victims. When fortune 
changed, their conquerors were no more merciful. The 
mutiny was not entirely crushed until June, 1858. Soon 
afterwards the rule of the East India Company was termi- 
nated and the government of the country vested in the 
crown. Lord Canning was appointed the first viceroy of 
India (November, 1858). 

Lord Palmerston Prime Minister (1859-1865) . — Accused 
of subservience to the French emperor. Lord Palmerston 
had fallen from power in 1858. The conservative ministry 
of Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli did not last twelve months. 
Lord Palmerston again became prime minister. Lord Rus- 
sell secretary of foreign affairs and Mr. Gladstone chan- 
cellor of the exchequer. This strong Cabinet controlled the 
destinies of the empire for six years. One of its most im- 
portant measures was the Cobden treaty with France (1860), 
whereby an immense step was taken toward free trade. In 
Jamaica an insurrection was repressed by Governor Eyre 
with extraordinary severity (1865). 

The Civil War in America (1861-1865). —When the war 
of secession broke out, the attitude of Great Britain caused 
surprise and disappointment in America. With unfriendly 
haste the British government recognized the Confederacy as 



A.D. 1861-1867.] GREAT BRITAIN 683 

a belligerent, and issued a proclamation of strict neutrality 
between the Federal Union and the seceded states (May 13, 
1861). Then, regardless of its own proclamation, it per- 
mitted privateers like the Florida and the Alabama to be 
built in English yards and manned with English sailors in 
order to prey upon American commerce. Lord Palmerston, 
Mr. Gladstone and many members of the House of Com- 
mons, especially liberals, made remarks and speeches which 
left a sting. The Duke of Argyle, John Stuart Mill and 
the Manchester party of Cobden and Bright were staunch 
friends of the North. Mr. Disraeli was absolutely impar- 
tial. An American captain forcibly removed Confederate 
envoys from the Trent, a British mail-boat (November 8). 
This unjust act was speedily disavowed by President Lin- 
coln, but the negotiations concerning it were conducted by 
the British secretary in an arrogant and overbearing tone. 
It was commonly believed that the American Union had 
broken to pieces, and Lord Palmerston never spared those 
whom he considered weak. While the controversy was 
hottest, the calm and judicious Prince Albert died (Decem- 
ber 14, 1861), as sincerely lamented in the United States 
as in Great Britain. 

Cotton had been obtained almost wholly from America. 
The blockade of the Southern ports cut off the supply and 
the mills shut down. Only charity saved the operatives 
from starvation. More than 480,000 persons in cotton- 
spinning Lancashire received assistance. But they believed 
slavery a crime. So, despite their misery, they never wa- 
vered in unselfish and never to be forgotten sympathy for 
the United States. 

Second Reform Bill (1867). — Lord Palmerston died (Octo- 
ber 18, 1865) and Lord Russell became prime minister. 
Mr. Gladstone was chancellor of the exchequer. His 
Reform Bill failed, and Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli 
returned to office. The latter, convinced that the country 
urgently desired electoral reforms, introduced and carried 
what is known as the Second Reform Bill. This was a 
democratic measure, adding to the list almost 1,000,000 
voters, specially among the workingmen. Li the boroughs 
all householders who paid rates and lodgers who occupied 
l^uildings of an annual value of ten pounds became voters. 
So, too, in the counties did persons occupying houses or 
lands of twelve pounds annual value. This bill abolished 



684 ■ CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1867-18G9. 

many inequalities, disfranchising small constituencies and 
securing increased representation to large ones. 

First Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone ( December, 1868- 
February, 1874) . The Irish Question. — The elections under 
the Keform Bill gave the liberals a large majority and made 
Mr. Gladstone prime minister. * The badly organized and 
ill-fated Fenian movement had been noisily dragging along 
for nine years. Mr. Gladstone grappled at once with the 
Irish question. Ireland had serious grounds of complaint. 
Those most apparent could be grouped roughly under two 
heads, the Church and the Land. As to the Church : the 
large majority of the Irish were intensely Catholic, but the 
Irish state church was Protestant, Anglican and heavily 
endowed. As to the Land: the position of the tenant was 
little removed from serfdom and he was practically at the 
mercy of his landlord. He could be evicted at the land- 
lord's pleasure, and had no claim for money expended and 
improvements made. Mr. Gladstone's measure for the dis- 
establishment of the Irish church and its partial disendow- 
ment became a law on July 26, 1869. His other measure, 
which freed the tenant from the grip of his landlord, guar- 
anteed him the fruits of his labor and protected him by a 
special judiciary arrangement, became a law on August 1, 
1870. 

The Alabama Claims. — Under the "Alabama Claims" is 
summed up the gravest case the United States have had 
against Great Britain since 1776. Mr. Adams, the Ameri- 
can minister to the Court of St. James, gave notice (Novem- 
ber 20, 1862) that the United States solicited redress for 
the public and private injuries caused by the Alabama. 
Lord Russell denied any British liability for the same. 
Mr. Adams (April 5, 1865) submitted an official memoran- 
dum of the losses caused by the Alabama, and similar ships 
of war which had gone from Great Britain. He had pre- 
viously suggested arbitration. Lord Russell replied that 
the British government declined "either to make reparation 
or compensation ... or to refer the question to any for- 
eign state." Succeeding British cabinets were less reserved. 

The Johnson-Clarendon Convention to adjust these claims 
was rejected as unsatisfactory by the American Senate 
(April, 1869). The United States took no further action. 
Later on, when the European political sky grew threatening, 
Great Britain herself made overtures for an adjustment 



A.D. 1869-1880.] GREAT BRITAIN 685 

(January, 1871). After long negotiations the whole matter 
was submitted to a tribunal of arbitration, the president of 
the United States, the queen of Great Britan, the king of 
Italy, the president of the Swiss Republic and the emperor 
of Brazil each appointing one commissioner. The tribunal, 
the British delegate alone dissenting, decided that the Brit- 
ish government had "failed to use due diligence in the 
performance of its neutral obligations," and awarded the 
United States an indemnity of $15,500,000 (September 14, 
1872). 

Second Prime Ministry of Mr. Disraeli (February, 1874- 
April, 1880). — Mr. Disraeli was created a peer under the 
title of Lord Beacons field in August, 1876. His adminis- 
tration concerned itself little with domestic politics, but 
won spectacular triumphs in foreign affairs. One morning 
he announced in the House of Commons that he had secured 
Great Britain proprietary control of the Suez Canal by pur- 
chasing the shares of the khedive of Egypt for £4,000,000 
(February, 1876). He consolidated the authority of the 
queen over India by inducing her to assume the proud title 
of Kaiser-i-Hind, Empress of India, and by assembling a 
gorgeous durbar at Delhi, where all the chief native princes 
acclaimed Victoria as the successor of the Great Mogul 
(January, 1877). This dramatic ceremony made deeper 
impression upon the Oriental mind than any display of 
armies could have done. By jjeaceful convention with 
Turkey he acquired the island of Cyprus, which is of im- 
portance in commanding the Suez Canal, but, above all, 
counterbalances the Russian fortress of Kars and threatens 
the Syrian route to the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf 
(June 4, 1878). He imposed the Congress of Berlin on 
Russia (June, 1878), thus forcing that victorious empire to 
submit to the arbitrament of Europe and vindicating the 
principle that what concerns all cannot be decided by one 
alone. The territorial decisions of that congress, as of all 
similar international assemblies, were certain to be modi- 
fied by circumstances and time, but the fact that the con- 
gress convened was a striking diplomatic triumph for Great 
Britain. The reverse of the picture is found in the Zulu 
war (1877-1879), the attempted annexation of the Trans- 
vaal Republic (1878-1881) and the second Afghan war in 
search of "a scientific frontier" (1878-1881), none of which 
increased the reputation of British justice or British arms. 



686 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1880-1882. 

Lord Beaconsfield died a year after his departure from office 
(April 19, 1881). 

Second Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone (April, 1880- 
June, 1885). — The defeat of the University Bill for Ireland 
had thrown Mr. Gladstone from power in 1874. The Irish 
question thrust itself to the forefront throughout his second 
administration. In 1873 the Irish Home Rule movement 
had begun. Its founder, Mr. Butt, and his great successor 
in leadership, Mr. Parnell, were both Protestants. It 
sought self-government for Ireland in local affairs, but by 
legal means without violence. In 1879 the National Irish 
Land League was formed. It aimed at abolishing the 
iniquitous landlord system and introducing peasant pro- 
prietorship. The landlords were in the habit of evicting 
their tenants and the tenant of committing outrages in re- 
venge. The government passed a coercive act, arrested 
Mr. Parnell and the Irish leaders, threw them into prison 
and suppressed the Land League. Lord Frederick Caven- 
dish, chief secretary for Ireland, and Mr. Burke, permanent 
under-secretary, were assassinated in Phoenix Park, Dublin 
(May 5, 1882). In unhappy Ireland coercion and murder 
kept pace. 

Occupation of Egypt (1882). — The khedive acted as both 
ruler and proprietor of Egypt. The enormous loans which 
he had obtained in Europe resulted in the country being 
placed under the dual financial control of Great Britain and 
France. Rapidly succeeding khedives were lazy and weak 
and the interests of the natives were entirely ignored. 
France withdrew from the combination. Colonel Arabi 
Pasha raised the cry, " Egypt for the Egyptians, ^' and began 
to fortify Alexandria. He desisted at the remonstrance of 
the British consul. A native mob plundered the European 
quarter and murdered several foreigners. Arabi Pasha 
went on with his defences. The British fleet bombarded 
the city, and meanwhile the infuriated populace massacred 
more than 2000 Europeans (July 12, 1882). Two days later 
the British forces disembarked and took possession. Arabi 
Pasha concentrated his army at Zagazig and Tel-el-Kebir. 
Attacked by General Wolseley (September 13), the Egyp- 
tians fought bravely, but finally took to flight, leaving 2000 
dead. Arabi Pasha was exiled to Ceylon and the British 
have since occupied Egypt. 

Mohammed Achmet, who proclaimed himself the Mahdi, 



A.D. 1882-1886.] GREAT BRITAIN 687 

raised his banner in the Soudan and defeated four Egyptian 
armies (1880-1882). Next he destroyed an anglo-Egyptian 
force of 10,000 men, commanded by General Hicks Pasha 
and forty European officers (October, 1883). Of the host only 
two persons escaped death. General Gordon was sent from 
London (January 18, 1884) to extricate the Egyptian garri- 
sons still remaining in the Soudan. Just one month later 
(February 18) he reached Khartoum, which was at once 
invested by the Arabs. In desperate need of assistance he 
seemed to be forgotten by his government. Toward the 
end of the year a powerful expedition started with precipi- 
tate haste to his relief. A few days earlier it might have 
saved him. Before it arrived, Khartoum had been captured 
and Major-General Gordon, one of the saintliest and most 
heroic soldiers England ever produced, was slain by the 
Arabs on January 27, 1885. 

The Third Reform Bill (June, 1885). — This bill empha- 
sized the progress of Great Britain toward universal suf- 
frage, adding nearly 2,000,000 voters, largely from the 
agricultural classes, to the list. It redistricted the country 
on the basis of population and rectified the former undue 
proportion of members allowed the towns. Heretofore the 
towns had one deputy for every 41,200 inhabitants and the 
countjy districts one deputy for every 70,800. 

First Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (June, 1885-Eeb- 
ruary, 1886). Third Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone (Feb- 
ruary, 1886-August, 1886). The Irish Home Rule Bill. — 
The liberal majority of 120 in the Commons had gradually 
shrunk to a minority. Lord Salisbury became prime min- 
ister. Five months afterwards Mr. Gladstone again took 
office. To the new House 335 liberals had been elected, 249 
conservatives and eighty-six Irish home rulers. The sj^s- 
tem of coercion pursued by Mr. Gladstone in his former 
ministry had utterly failed. Completely reversing his 
preceding policy, he introduced an Irish Home Rule Bill. 
The Irish members abandoned their temporary alliance with 
the conservatives and rallied to its support. But the bill 
was opposed by many liberal leaders, among them Lord 
Hartington, Mr. Goschen, Mr. Chamberlain and John 
Bright, who took the name of liberal unionists. It was 
defeated by a majority of thirty. Parliament was imme- 
diately dissolved. 

Second Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (Aug., 1886- 



688 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1886-1898. 

August, 1892). — The elections had given the conservatives 
and liberal unionists a majority of 112 over the Gladstonians 
and Irish home rulers combined. The policy of Lord Salis- 
bury's second administration was vigor in foreign relations 
and renewed coercion in Ireland. The Bering Sea contro- 
versy with the United States in regard to the seal fisheries 
began in 1886 and was supposed to have secured a settle- 
ment in 1893. Parliament dissolved in 1892, having filled 
its allotted span of six years. 

Fourth Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone (August, 1892- 
IMarcli, 1894). Lord Rosebery Prime Minister (March, 
1894- June, 1895). Third Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury 
(June, 1895- ). — • This time the unitetl Gladstonians and 
Irish liome rulers obtained a majority of forty-two, though 
among the English members there was an adverse majority 
of sevanty. Mr. Gladstone was again prime minister. 
The Home Rule Bill, victorious in the House of Commons, 
was defeated in the House of Lords by a vote of more than 
ten to one. T'he venerable prime minister, at the age of 
eighty-four, resigned his high office, and advised the queen 
to intrust Lord Bosebery with the formation of a Cabinet. 

Dissensions and internal rivalries soon further weakened 
the liberal party. At the elections in July, 1895, the con- 
servatives obtained a clear majority and are no longer de- 
pendent on their still faithful allies, tlie liberal unionists, 
for support. The Irish question could not however be 
shelved. The ministry itself introduced an Irish Local 
Government Bill, which was approved by the House of 
Lords on July 29, 1898. The foreign policy of Lord Salis- 
bury in his present ministry has been less vigorous than of 
old. In international questions, like the Armenian massa- 
cres or the Cretan insurrection, Great Britain has been con- 
tent to act or to abstain from acting in concert with the 
great Powers. But no American should forget, when re- 
calling our struggle of this present year with Spain, that 
the sympathies of the British government and people were 
almost unanimously upon our side. Lord Salisbury and 
the Englishmen of 1898 have not repeated the blunder of 
Lord Palmerston and the Englishmen of 1861-1865. On 
May 19, 1898, Mr. Gladstone died at the age of eighty-eight, 
admired and regretted by the world. 

Characteristics of the Reign of Queen Victoria. — The first 
and most apparent is its length. Already the venerated 



A.D. 1838-1898.] GREAT BRITAIN 689 

queen has honored the throne for more than sixty-one years. 
Edward III was king for fifty years and George III for 
fifty-nine. Thus the present sovereign has surpassed all 
her predecessors in the length of her reign. In its pros- 
perity, its increasing imperial strength and its intellectual 
brilliancy, the only other English reign which can be brought 
into comparison is that of another woman. Queen Elizabeth. 
But tlie England of the sixteenth century was an undevel- 
oped child beside that giant among the nations, the British 
Empire of to-day. This reign is memorable for its constant 
advance in political reform. The Civil Service Keform 
(1853-1855), the Removal of all Disabilities from the Jews 
(1859), the Abolition of Army Purchase and University 
Religious Tests (1871), the Ballot Act (1872), the Act for 
the Prevention of Corrupt Practices at Elections (1883), the 
Plimsoll Act for the Better Protection of Seamen (1886), 
the Employers' Liability Bill (1897), are among those 
hard- wrung acquisitions which, once secured, contribute to 
make a nation strong and great. 

Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone. — Their swords first 
clashed in the House of Commons in February, 1852. The 
agony of their contest ended only when Gladstone pro- 
nounced his eloquent eulogy over the bier of his rival in 
April, 1881. Each thrice succeeded the other as chancellor 
of the exchequer. In the same year, 1868, both vaulted 
to the summit of British j^olitical ambition. Twice Mr. 
Disraeli gave x:»lace to Mr. Gladstone as prime minister. 
Disraeli, at first a radical, became a conservative, and Glad- 
stone, at first a conservative, became a liberal. In both 
there always remained something of their earlier political 
creed. Disraeli failed in his Reform Bill of 1859, but gave 
the workingmen the Reform Bill of 1868. Gladstone failed 
in his Reform Bill of 1867, but gave the agricultural classes 
the Reform Bill of 1884. Disraeli presented Great Britain 
with Cyprus, a province of the Sultan, and Gladstone pre- 
sented her with Egypt, another province of the Sultan. 
Both were endowed with unusual talent, but Gladstone was 
born in the purple of politics and Disraeli was the child of 
an ostracized race. To Gladstone honors came apparently 
unasked. To Disraeli honors came because he forced them 
to come. Each served Great Britain with his might. The 
figure of Gladstone, overshadowing because to-day removed 
from the world, hides to our eye the titanic proportions of 
2y 



690 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY 

his rival so long under the sod. But as both recede in the 
horizon of the past, the problem will constantly grow more 
difficult as to which was the greater. For nothing is the 
reign more memorable than that two such men, through 
almost a generation, were pitted against each other in a 
political duel such as the history of statescraft nowhere 
else presents. 




Ib'Ji. hi T. V. Ciomell &Co, 







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PARTITION OF AFRICA, ASIA AND OCEANIA 691 



XYI 

PARTITION OF AFRICA, ASIA AND OCEANIA 

Seizure of Unoccupied Territory. — A main characteristic 
of contemporary history is the division among themselves 
by the European Powers of the " unoccupied " portions of 
the globe. By " unoccupied " are meant all regions, not 
already reckoned as possessions of European governments 
or held by descendants of Europeans who have burst colo- 
nial bonds and founded independent states. That is, those 
territories which are not controlled by Europeans, or by 
descendants of Europeans, are politically reckoned as not 
"occupied" at all. This is simply the application in the 
nineteenth century of the principle held unquestioned 400 
years ago. 

The newly discovered western hemisphere was looked 
upon and treated by European nations in the sixteenth cen- 
tury as land destitute of inhabitants, or at most lived upon 
by inhabitants who had no political and almost no other 
rights. The treaties made with the natives were generally, 
in the estimation of the new-comers, merely additional pre- 
cautions of self-defence, like the forts and stockades they 
built. As the stockades and forts were abandoned, when 
no longer of advantage, so, as the colonists grew strong, the 
treaties were commonly forgotten. The exceptional in- 
stances, when such was not the case, as in the dealings of 
William Penn, are dwelt upon as remarkable and awaken no 
more admiration than surprise. Some nations were less 
inhuman than others, but the process of converting the " un- 
occupied " into the " occupied " was everywhere the same. 
Nor did priority of occupation ensure possession to one 
European against another, unless it could be maintained by 
force. 

The entire theory and practice of sixteenth-century occu- 
pation has been revived, specially in the last half of the 
present century. The justice or injustice of its application 
has never changed. If it was right when, at the end of the 



692 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848- 

Middle Ages, undreamed of regions were revealed to the 
wonder of Europe, it is right now. If it was wrong then, 
it is wrong now. The relatively increased superiority of 
the civilized over the uncivilized in arms and efficiency has 
made latter-day conquest more speedy and more effectual. 
Often it has been no less stoutly resisted. But conquest 
has not been essential to political occupation. Hundreds 
of thousands of square miles have been "occupied" with 
hardly the firing of a shot. International conveutions and 
agreements have indicated upon the map a partition of lands 
and peoples, of which meanwhile the human beings ap- 
propriated have known nothing. 

Before the year 1848 the Western hemisphere was " oc- 
cupied." The weakness of its smaller independent states, 
whose citizens were largely of European origin, was pro- 
tected by the Monroe doctrine of 1823. This doctrine 
declared that the American continents should not " be con- 
sidered as subjects for colonization by the European 
Powers." Upon this declaration Great Britain and France 
have been the only European Powers to infringe. 

But the grasp after empire in the Old World outside 
Europe during the last fifty years has been feverish and 
almost universal. It has repeated in spoliation and 
appropriation all that the New World ever experienced. 
Distance has counted for nothing, and sometimes the 
worthlessness of the acquisition no more. Technically the 
system of annexation has varied in different circumstances 
and at different times. Yet, reduced to plain terms, the 
process has been uniform and simple, merely to seize and 
to retain. Previous to 1848 only a relatively small propor- 
tion of Africa, Asia and Oceania had been "occupied." 
Now in Oceania there is hardly an island over which there 
does not float a European flag. Africa has been parcelled 
out among the Powers as half a dozen heirs might divide 
the farm of some intestate dead man. Asia, most venerable 
in history, mother of the nations, has been compressed in a 
grip ever tightening around her receding frontiers, or has 
resembled an island whose diminishing outer rim the 
aggressive waters rapidly wear away. 

Occupation of Africa. — In 1848 isolated European colo- 
nies dotted the coasts of Africa, but less than 400,000 square 
miles of territory acknowledged European proprietorship. 
Away inland from this sparse outer fringe stretched a vague 



1898.] PARTITION OF AFRICA, ASIA AND OCEANIA 693 

vastitude of 11,000,000 square miles, unpossessed and un- 
explored. All this enormous territory has been mapped out 
and divided up. .The German Empire has taken 1,000,000 
square miles; Belgium in the Congo Free State 900,000; 
France 2,900,000; Portugal 800,000; and other less for- 
midable national adventurers 500,000 more. In all Africa 
Morocco, Abyssinia, Liberia and a portion of the unbounded 
Sahara are the only regions to which European Powers do 
not put forth a claim. 

Great Britain has already secured over 3,000,000 square 
miles. The present expedition up the Nile (August, 1898), 
under General Kitchener, aims at the conquest of the Sou- 
dan between Egypt and British East, or Equatorial, Africa. 
Its already assured success renders possible at no distant 
day the completion of a British trans-African railway, over 
5000 miles long, from Alexandria to Cape Town, passing 
all the way through British territory. 

The Boer Republics. — Nor has later occupation respected 
prior rights of European settlers, except as vindicated by 
arms. The Boers, descendants of the early Dutch colo- 
nists, a simple, primitive, Bible-reading people, emigrated 
from Cape Colony, after it became a British possession, and 
founded on the north and along the coast the Dutch Repub- 
lic of Natal. The British, whose only claim was founded 
on superior strength, conquered and annexed this republic 
in 1843. Again the Boers emigrated, this time to the west 
and the interior, and founded the Orange Free State and the 
Transvaal, or South African Republic. The independence 
of both was formally recognized by the British government. 
To overthrow these two states and annex their territory of 
168,000 square miles has been the constant endeavor of the 
British colonies of Natal, Cape of Good Hope and Rhodesia, 
which surround the Boer states except on the northeast. 
The British government was persuaded to proclaim the an- 
nexation of the Transvaal (April 12, 1877), but the Boers 
successfully resisted, by arms, this assault upon their inde- 
pendence. Likewise, in 1896, they defeated and captured 
a British force which, in violation of all treaties, was march- 
ing against their capital. Any participation in this attack 
was disclaimed by the British government, but the absorp- 
tion of the brave little republics is only a question of time. 

Occupation of Asia. — Asia might appear inviolable with 
her immensity of 14,700,000 square miles and her popula- 



694 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848- 

tion of 850,000,000 souls. Her countless hordes, set in re- 
sistless motion by a sudden common impulse, were until 
modern times the terror of mankind. Genghis Khan has 
not been dead 700 years nor Tamerlane 500. Yet, except 
Japan, which was galvanized into unwilling life by the 
United States in 1853 and seemingly sure of existence for 
the present, all Asia is at the mercy of Europe and protected 
only by the jealousies of the Western states. While other 
nations are active in their struggle after a share in Asiatic 
spoils, her conquest and division is being accomplished 
above all by Great Britain and Russia. Between the upper, 
or northern, millstone of Eussia and the lower, or southern, 
millstone of Great Britain, she is being ground with the 
remorselessness of fate. 

The barriers of the Caucasus were overthrown by the 
surrender of the Circassians and Schamyl (1859) to Prince 
Bariatinski. The Caspian has become a Eussian lake. 
Nominally independent Persia is so completely under Eus- 
sian influence as to resemble a protectorate. Across the 
subjugated khanates of Bokhara (1873), Khokand (1875), 
and Khiva (1875), Eussia has pushed her outposts as far as 
the Tien Shan, or Celestial Mountains. By Turkestan, Si- 
beria and Manchuria she envelops China on the west, north 
and northeast in a great concave. 

In Southern Asia, Beloochistan, since 1854, has gradually 
disintegrated into a British "political agency." Afghan- 
istan, on which Great Britain has expended millions of 
pounds and thousands of lives, still maintains a fluctuating, 
savage independence. Its emir, Abdur Ealiman, elated 
with his successes, assumed (1896) the pompous Afghan 
title of "Light of Union and Eeligion," but the division of 
his states between the two empires is not thereby rendered 
remote. One-eighth of the Asiatic continent and more than 
a third of its entire population are contained in British 
India. By the acquisition of the feudatory state of Sikkim 
(1889) Great Britain plunges through the Himalayas and 
imperils China on the south. The kingdom of Burmah was 
attacked and annexed to the British dominions in 1885. 
To Singapore have been gradually annexed, mostly since 
1848, the petty states of the Malay Peninsula under the 
name of the Straits Settlements. 

The disintegration of the Chinese Empire was begun by 
the British in the opium war (1839-1842), by which the 



1898] PARTITION OF AFRICA, ASIA AND OCEANIA 695 

island of Hong Kong was acquired. The opposite penin- 
sula of Kau-Lung was ceded to Great Britain after the 
English and French wars with China in 1856-1860. Man- 
churia, north of the Amur and east of the Usuri, was ceded 
to Russia in 1860. 

France, eager for Asiatic territory, annexed Cochin-China 
(1861), Cambodia (1862), Anam and Tonldng (1884) and 
Siam east of the Mekong River (1893-1896), altogether an 
area of 383,000 square miles. 

Japan, in one respect at least, caught the European spirit. 
She was emulous of similar conquests. After more than 
three years of careful and extensive preparation she believed 
herself ready and forced war on China (1894). The latter 
was wholly unprepared. Japan was everywhere victorious, 
both on sea and land. By the treaty of Shimonoseki (April 
16, 1895), the conquerors compelled the cession of the island 
of Formosa (15,000 square miles) and an indemnity of 230,- 
000,000 taels. Only the intervention of Russia, Germany 
and France rescued northeastern China from dismemberment 
by Japan. 

During the last twelve months the Western Powers have 
engaged in rivalry, thus far without warfare, to acquire 
Chinese ports. The Germans obtained Kiao-chau (Decem- 
ber, 1897), the Russians Port Arthur and Talien Wan 
(April, 1897) and the British Wei-Hai-Wei (April, 1897). 

China is helpless to protect herself. No state is inter- 
ested to defend her territorial integrity. A concession to 
any single Power awakens the jealousies of the rest, and 
its natural sequence is the demand for an equivalent. To 
all she is vulnerable along the Yellow, the Eastern and the 
South China seas. To only two. Great Britain and Russia, 
is she vulnerable by land. So, to her perils from all by 
water are added perils, more insidious because less mani- 
fest, from the two most powerful empires in the world. 
They hem her in upon the north, west and south, and no 
mountain boundaries are too high for the Russian and the 
Englishman to scale. 

Occupation of Oceania. — Oceania is a comprehensive 
and elastic term, commonly denoting the islands of the 
Pacific and Indian oceans. The largest of these, Australia, 
because of its prodigious extent of over 3,000,000 square 
miles, is often reckoned a continent. It is a British pos- 
session. Now inhabited by an active population of more 



696 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848- 

than 3,500,000 people, its first settlement dates from the 
middle, and its division into the five great constitutional 
states of Victoria, Queensland, JSTew South Wales, South 
Australia and Western Australia from the last half of the 
nineteenth century. 

Papua, or New Guinea, "the largest island in the world," 
has been parcelled out between three Powers, Germany in 
1884 acquiring 72,000 square miles under the name of 
Kaiser Wilhelm^s land; Great Britain in 1888 acquiring 
90,000 square miles; while the remainder, 150,000 square 
miles, is held by the Netherlands. 

In Borneo, which is situated half-way between Australia 
and Hong Kong, a gradual accretion, since 1836, resulted 
in a formal British protectorate (1888-1890) over British 
North Borneo, Brunei, Sarawak and the Limbang River 
district, altogether about 81,000 square miles. Its remain- 
ing 203,000 square miles belong to the Netherlands. 

Madagascar, with its 228,500 square miles, is reckoned 
" the third largest island in the world. " After a long suc- 
cession of wars with the natives on the part of the French, 
it was recognized by Great Britain as a protectorate of 
France (1890) and became fully a French possession in 
1896. 

The three islands of Tasmania, or New Zealand, comprise 
103,900 square miles. They received their first immigrants 
in 1839. A little territory was ceded by the native chiefs 
during the following year. Great Britain was able to assert 
an undisputed control in 1875. 

Among the myriad other islands are the more than 1200 
Philippines and the Carolines, Sulus and Ladrones, which 
for centuries have belonged to Spain, but whose destiny is 
now undetermined. Their area is 116,256 square miles. 
There are also the Moluccas and Java and Sumatra and 
many others with spicy names, making an area of 338,000 
square miles, which, together with the Dutch territories in 
Borneo and New Guinea, constitute the Dutch East Indies. 
They have belonged to the Netherlands since the dissolution 
of the Dutch East India Company in 1798. 

In the Pacific Great Britain acquired the 200 Fiji Islands, 
8045 square miles, by cession of the native chiefs (1874) ; 
Pitcairn Island (1839) ; Labuan Island (1846) ; the twelve 
Manihikis (1888); the sixteen atolls called the Gilbert 
Islands (1892); Maiden Island, rich in guano (1866); and 



1898.] PARTITION OF AFRICA, ASIA AND OCEANIA 697 

eighteen islands of the Santa Cruz and Duff groups (1898). 
She has also secured, mostly since 1848, the fifteen Hervey, 
or Cook Islands, the Palmerston Islands, Ducie Island, the 
Suvarof Islands, Dudoza Island, Victoria Island, the five 
clusters of the Tokelau or Union Islands, the eight Phoenix 
Islands, the islands and groups of the Lagoons, Starbuck 
Island, Jarvis Island, Christmas Island, Fanning Island, 
Washington Island and Palmyra Island. She acquired 
the southern half of the Solomon Islands (1893), Germany 
having seized the northern half of that archipelago in 1886. 
The New Hebrides Islands have been shared by Great 
Britain and France. To the thriving Island of Mauritius, 
taken from the French (1810), Great Britain has since added 
in one colonial dependency the Eodrigues, Seychelles, 
Amirantes, Cargados and the Oil Groups. The indepen- 
dence is at present recognized of the 150 Tonga, or Friendly 
Islands. So is that of the Samoan Islands by convention 
between Germany, Great Britain and the United States in 
1889. 

The Route to India. — To fortify the sea route to India and 
to hold the natural strongholds in the Eed Sea, the Persian 
Gulf and the Indian Ocean, from which the British Indian 
Empire might be threatened, has been the untiring preoccu- 
pation of British statesmen. This has been rendered neces- 
sary by the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869. The chain 
of Gibraltar (1704), Malta (1800), Cyprus (1878) and the Suez 
Canal itself (1876) is continued by the volcanic peninsula 
of Aden (1839), since enlarged by an acquired protectorate 
over an inland region of 8000 square miles, by Perim Island 
(1857), Sokotra Island (1876) and the Kuria Muria Islands 
off the Arabian coast. These last acquisitions guard the 
Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and render the waters of the Ked 
Sea more distinctively British than is St. George's Channel 
between England and Ireland. The eight Bahrein Islands, 
famous for their pearls, since 1857 sentinel in British inter- 
ests the mouth of the Persian Gulf. With what might seem 
superfluous solicitude Great Britain annexed the Andaman 
Islands (1858) with a territory of 1760 square miles, the 
nineteen Nicobar Islands (1869) with a territory of 634 
square miles, and the numerous coral group of the Lacca- 
dives with 744 square miles. 

Results of Territorial Expansion. — In this movement of 
territorial expansion four nations have led the van. Dur- 



698 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848- 

ing the last fifty years Great Britain has taken possession 
of over 3,600,000 square miles of "unoccupied" territory, 
France of over 3,200,000 square miles and Eussia and 
Germany of about 1,200,000 square miles apiece. Some of 
these acquisitions have been prompted only by lust for mere 
land or to forestall some other grasper. Increase of area 
always gratifies national vanity, but it by no means always 
indicates or secures corresponding increase in national 
wealth and strength. 

Whatever the French and German colonial possessions 
may become in the future, thus far they have proved only 
a burden and a cause of expense without proportionate gain. 
In France, where the population is almost stationary, the 
land well divided among many petty proprietors and the 
colonial instinct weak, there is little to impel to emigration. 
Algeria is close to France, separated only by the width of 
the Mediterranean. Its natural advantages are great. No- 
where could French colonization have a more accessible and 
a more attractive field. Yet, after sixty-eight years of occu- 
pancy, the French colonists are fewer in number than those 
from the other European states, and the annual expenditure 
— not including interest on the growing debt nor necessary 
appropriations for the army and navy nor the cost of origi- 
nal conquest — exceeds the revenue by more than 19,000,- 
000 francs. In the same way other and remoter French 
possessions, like Anam, Tonking, Madagascar and Cochin- 
Chin a, make no effective appeal to French emigrants and 
are exhaustive drains upon the resources of France. 

The Germans are a more prolific people than the French 
and more adventurous. Unequal distribution of land in 
their native country and social inequality render them ready 
emigrants. But they show disinclination to colonize where 
the imperial German system prevails. The Kameruns in 
Africa have been a colony for thirteen years. Their coast 
line is more than 200 miles long and their area more than 
191,000 square miles. But in 1897 they had only 181 Ger- 
man residents. In Kaiser Wilhelm's Land, German since 
1884, there were in 1896 only ninety-seven Germans. That 
is, in both colonies united there were not so many German 
emigrants as constantly cross the Atlantic from Bremen in 
a single ship. There -is not a state in the American Union 
in which there are not to-day from four times to 1200 times 
as many German-born inhabitants as in both these two pet 



1898.] PARTITION OF AFRICA, ASIA AND OCEANIA 699 

colonies of the Kaiser. There are few if any German 
colonial dependencies where the revenue is a third of the 
expenditure. 

The acquisitions of Russia and Great Britain, on the 
other hand, have been made in accordance with the nature 
of their people and on the lines of a sound policy. Neither 
has been tempted by mere territorial aggrandizement to 
acquire or retain what was without value or might become 
a source of weakness. So Russia was ready to sell Alaska, 
in 1867, to the United States and to give Japan, in 1875, 
the Kurile Islands in exchange for the southern half of 
Saghalien. Likewise, Great Britain, in 1864, could cede 
the Ionian Islands to Greece ; and Heligoland, in 1890, to 
Germany. 

Russia is an immense, continuous land empire, situated 
in the north with a minimum of coast line. Her northern 
harbors are closed by ice through a large part of the year, 
and her southern harbors are j)revented by physical or other 
causes from free access to great bodies of water. Her nat- 
ural expansion would be eastward, southward and toward 
the sea. Thus in the Caucasus, the Ottoman Empire, 
Persia, Turkestan and China she has ever pushed in this 
direction. Her conquests she easily assimilates and amal- 
gamates their inhabitants to her own people. 

Britain, the island centre of the British Empire, has no 
other highway than the seas. Her people are active, ven- 
turesome and aggressive. The contracted limits of the 
island force the expatriation of its prolific children. No 
other people equal them as colonizers and no other are so 
at home the world over. Commercial instinct joins with 
marvellous manufacturing ability to seek and find every- 
where a market. As the development of Russia is inevi- 
table and resistless by land, so is the development of Great 
Britain inevitable and resistless by sea. 



700 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1848-1853. 



XVII 

THE UNITED STATES 

American History. — The most important of all histories 
to an American is that of his own country. Not only does 
it appeal to his patriotism, but in it is found as nowhere 
else the story of self-government by the people. Moreover, 
during the last fifty years few nations have equalled the 
United States in contributions to the sum of human welfare 
and progress. A history so interesting and comprehensive 
cannot be summed up nor will it be sought in the limited 
compass of any compendium. This book deals primarily 
with European history. It will therefore be the object of 
this chapter to merely touch upon those points wherein 
the United States have come in contact with the rest of the 
world, rather than to narrate internal and domestic affairs. 

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848). The Gadsden Pur- 
chase (1853). The last half century is bounded at both its 
beginning and end by a war, the one with Mexico, the 
most powerful and most populous of the Spanish-American 
states, and the other, in 1898, with Spain herself. The 
first war, after a series of American successes, was termi- 
nated by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 
1848). Thereby the United States secured from Mexico 
the cession of 526,078 square miles and agreed to pay in 
return $15,000,000 and to satisfy claims of American citi- 
zens against Mexico to the amount of $3,250,000. This 
cession was rounded out in 1853, when Mr. Gadsden, for 
the sum of $10,000,000, purchased from Mexico, to which 
he was the American minister, 45,535 square miles south 
of the river Gila. From the region thus acquired have 
been carved California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and part 
of Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. 

The Clay ton-Bulwer Treaty (1850). — Intense excitement 
followed the discovery of gold in California early in 1848. 
During the following year between 80,000 and 100,000 eager 
gold hunters crowded to the newly opened mines. The 




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Engia.ed by CoUon. Ohuian i Co., N. V. 



A.D. 1850-1854.] THE UNITED STATES 701 

United States already enjoyed the right of transit across 
the Isthmus of Panama, but it was of supreme importance to 
open up direct water communication with the distant terri- 
tory. The consent and cooperation of Nicaragua was ob- 
tained by treaty for the construction of a ship canal from 
San Juan on the Atlantic through the lake of Nicaragua to 
the Pacific coast. But Great Britain claimed to exercise a 
protectorate over the Mosquito Indians, who were supposed 
to occupy the eastern coast through which the canal was to 
pass. She refused to permit its joint construction by Nica- 
ragua and the United States. In the subsequent negotia- 
tions between Mr. Clayton, the American secretary of state, 
and Sir Henry Bulwer, the British ambassador at Wash- 
ington, who acted in behalf of the British government. 
Great Britain scored the diplomatic victory known as the 
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. By this treaty both the United 
States and Great Britain renounced any exclusive control 
over the proposed ship canal. At the same time, they both 
agreed to neither occupy, fortify nor colonize Nicaragua, 
Costa Eica, the Mosquito coast or any part of Central 
America. The British government asserts that the first 
clause of the treaty is still in force. The American govern- 
ment, on the other hand, maintains that, as " Great Britain 
has persistently violated her agreement not to colonize the 
Central American coast," the treaty is void. The Spanish- 
American war of 1898 has even increased the necessity of a 
canal connecting the two oceans and has emphasized the 
fact that it must be under the unshared control of the 
United States. 

Complications with Austria (1849-1854). — Great sympa- 
thy was felt for the Hungarians in their struggle with Aus- 
tria. An agent was sent by President Taylor to obtain 
definite information as to whether recognition of the revo- 
lutionary government was warranted. Afterwards the 
frigate Mississippi was commissioned to bring the exiled 
leader, Kossuth, to the United States, where he was re- 
ceived with great enthusiasm. The Austrian charge 
d'affaires at Washington sharply protested against the 
despatch of the agent and the reception of Kossuth. Daniel 
Webster had become secretary of state. He replied in a 
powerful state paper, setting forth the principles by which 
the American nation considered itself controlled in dealing 
with international affairs. 



702 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1852-1854. 

Later on trouble arose over Martin Koszta, a Hungarian 
refugee, who had filed (1852) his declaration preliminary 
to naturalization as an American citizen. Visiting Smyrna 
in Asia Minor, in 1854, he was seized at the instigation of 
the Austrian consul-general by the crew of an Austrian 
frigate and thrown into irons. This was in contempt of 
the fact that he had an American passport in his posses- 
sion. Demands for his release were refused. Thereupon 
the captain of an American man-of-war, then in the harbor, 
prepared to use force and cleared his deck for action. 
Koszta was then placed by the Austrians under the charge 
of the French consul-general, and was soon afterwards 
allowed to return to America. 

The Ostend Manifesto (1854.) — The acquisition of Cuba, 
"the gem of the Antilles," was ardently desired by the 
Southern states of the American Union. Its chronic mis- 
government called forth their sympathy, but, above all, 
if a possession of the United States, it would add to their 
political power. Under the direction of President Pierce 
Messrs. Buchanan, Mason and Soule, the American minis- 
ters to Great Britain, France and Spain, met at Ostend to 
consult as to the measures necessary for its acquisition 
(1854). Then they issued the results of their deliberations 
in what is called the Ostend Manifesto. This paper set 
forth the grounds on which the annexation of the island was 
desired. It caused a profound sensation and a measure of 
apprehension in Europe. 

Commodore Perry's Expedition to Japan (1852-1854). — 
In 1637 all foreign traders, except the Dutch and the Chi- 
nese, were expelled from Japan. By exceptional favor the 
Dutch were permitted to occujoy the small, artiiicial island 
of Deshima in the harbor of Nagasaki. Their commerce 
however was severely restricted, no vessels being allowed 
to enter except one merchantman a year from Batavia, the 
capital of the Dutch East Indies. Up to the middle of the 
present century the Japanese jealously maintained their 
seclusion from the rest of mankind. The country suffered 
under a dual system of government, whereby the power of 
the de jure ruler, who resided at Kioto, was curtailed by 
the de facto ruler, the shogun, who resided at Yedo or 
Tokio. Meanwhile a party of less illiberal ideas was grow- 
ing up which, while detesting the foreigners, desired to 
gain from abroad whatever advantages it could. It was 



A.D. 1853-1867.] THE UNITED STATES 703 

ignorant and ill-informed, but appreciated the superiority 
of foreign arms, arts and inventions. 

Suddenly, without previous intimation of its coming, an 
American fleet made its appearance in the bay of Yedo 
(July 8, 1853). The astounded city was terror-stricken. 
No such sight had ever been seen in Japanese waters. 
That fleet had left America late in 1852 under the command 
of Commodore Perry, who was invested with extraordinary 
powers for the conclusion of treaties with Japan. As the 
bearer of a letter from President Fillmore, he refused to 
enter into communications with any except the highest dig- 
nitaries in the land. The Japanese were perplexed but 
courteous. The letter was delivered to the emperor. Then 
Commodore Perry sailed away, but returned in the follow- 
ing spring for his answer. His diplomatic ability after 
tedious negotiations partially broke down the bs^^s of sepa- 
ration. It was agreed that the ports of Shimoda and Hako- 
date should be open to American vessels, that an American 
consul should reside at Shimoda and that Americans should 
enjoy a certain liberty of trade and travel in some of the 
coast cities. This first treaty between Japan and a foreign 
state was signed on May 31, 1854. The other nations in 
quick succession sought and obtained the same advantages. 
But it was the honor of the United States to have led the 
way. Without the firing of a shot she had opened Japan 
to the brotherhood of nations, and had brought Western 
civilization and commerce to her ports. 

The United States and China (1858-1892). —The war car- 
ried on by the allied British and French against China in 
1856-1860 gave much concern to the American government. 
Hon. W. B. Reed was sent by President Buchanan to watch 
the course of events and mediate if possible between the 
contending parties. On behalf of his government he nego- 
tiated a commercial treaty with the Chinese, wherein the 
language of several clauses reveals their well-founded sus- 
picion of Western aims and methods. For six years (1861- 
1867) Hon. Anson Burlingame was American minister to 
the "Middle Kingdom." His rare tact made him the vir- 
tual director of the empire in its foreign relations. When 
about to return home, he was tendered and accepted the 
high position of envoy extraordinary from China to the 
Western Powers. With French and British secretaries and 
Chinese attaches he returned to his native country, and 



704 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1861-1865. 

there negotiated a treaty, advantageous and honorable to 
both China and the United States, which was approved on 
July 16, 1868. Ten years later (1878) a Chinese embassy 
was established at Washington, when Chen Lan Pin was 
received by President Hayes as minister plenipotentiary. 
Fourteen years later still the Chinese Exclusion Act was 
introduced to " absolutely prohibit the coming^ of Chinese 
persons to the United States." Its object was to prevent 
the immigration of Chinese laborers. Their immigration 
had assumed so large proportions as to cause anxiety, spe- 
cially on the Pacific coast. The bill, called the G-eary Act 
because introduced by Mr. Geary of California, after some 
modifications was approved by both Houses and received the 
signature of President Harrison (May 5, 1892). 

The Civil War (1861-1865). —The question of slavery 
had become the most x^ersistent and complex in American 
political life. Prominent ever since the foundation of the 
Union, gradually it had crowded all other questions to the 
background. In 1860 fifteen states employed slave labor. 
The sixteen other states did not. The former were com- 
monly called Southern or slave states, and the latter North- 
ern or free states. The presidential election of 1860 
disclosed the nation drawn up in sectional lines. Mr. Lin- 
coln uttered a great truth when he declared, in 1858, that, 
" This government cannot permanently endure half slave 
and half free. ... It will become all one thing or all the 
other." An overwhelming electoral defeat proved to the 
Southern states that they could not in the Union extend their 
peculiar labor system beyond their own borders. Inside 
their own borders they believed that system in danger. 
Eleven states asserted that they had a right to secede, 
passed enactments withdrawing from the Union, and formed 
a political association under the name of the Confederate 
States of America. 

The corner-stone of the new state edifice was slavery. 
The eleven states had seceded in order to extend, or at least 
perpetuate, slavery. The great majority of the other states 
regarded secession as a crime and took up arms to maintain 
the Union. The seceded states took up arms to vindicate 
their right of secession. Slavery had brought on the armed 
conflict, but the perpetuity or dissolution of the American 
Union was the vital issue. 

The first gun was fired when Fort Sumter, off Charleston, 



A.D. 1861-1865.] THE UNITED STATES 705 

South Carolina, was attacked by the Confederate General 
Beauregard, on April 12, 1861. The surrender of the Con- 
federate General Lee to General Grant took place at Appo- 
mattox Court House, in Virginia, on April 9, 1865. These 
two events mark the armed beginning and conclusion of a 
civil war which, as to the number of soldiers engaged, the 
number of battles fought and the cost of the struggle, is 
unequalled in history. To maintain the Union the Federal 
government brought into the field 2,778,304 soldiers. To 
overthrow the Union the Confederate government brought 
into the field nearly 1,000,000. Altogether in that four 
years' agony there were 2265 engagements, ranging from 
petty skirmishes between handfuls of men up to pitched 
battles lasting for days and fought with ferocious determina- 
tion between hundreds of thousands. Over 360,000 Federal 
soldiers fell in battle or died of wounds or disease. The 
Federal debt at the conclusion of the struggle had swollen 
to $2,808,549,437.55. The entire cost to the victorious 
party is commonly reckoned at $8,000,000,000, figures so 
vast that they baffle realization. " Never in the same space 
of time has there been a material expenditure so great." 

The arbitrament of the sword decided two questions which, 
with equal definiteness and permanence, could be determined 
in no other way. The first question concerned the American 
Union, the permanence of which was demonstrated and 
guaranteed. There was to be but one flag from the Atlan- 
tic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf. The second 
question concerned the system of human slavery, which was 
abolished upon the continent. Under the protection of that 
flag all were to be free men. 

On April 14, 1865, the great-hearted president, Mr. Lin- 
coln, was smitten down by the hand of an assassin. In his 
arduous office he had so borne himself as to win the respect 
and admiration, not only of his own country, but of the 
world. His murder called forth universal expressions of 
grief and horror. 

When the war ended there was no proscription of the con- 
quered; no court martials or gibbets blackened the land. 
The survivors of the victorious and vanquished hosts re- 
turned at once to the ordinary avocations of life, and, with 
no shock to the body politic, devoted themselves to the 
pursuits of peace. But all the disorders of a four years' 
war could not disappear in a day. The folly and crime of 
2z 



706 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1861-1876. 

secession, even after it was overthrown, left the seceded 
states in an anomalous condition. The so-called period of 
reconstruction lasted for twelve years. 

Most of the foreign Powers, at least their governing 
classes, had never believed in the stability of the American 
Eepublic. At first Europe considered the Civil War certain 
to result in the dissolution of the Union. Except as in- 
volving larger masses of men and spread in a wider area, it 
was regarded somewhat as we are wont to look upon revo- 
lutions and commotions in the states of Central or South 
America. As it progressed the world looked on aghast at 
the proportions of the struggle, but continued incredulous 
of Federal success. Napoleon III and a powerful party in 
Great Britain wished to recognize the Southern Confederacy. 
Such recognition would have plunged the American govern- 
ment in war with Great Britain and France, at a time when 
its utmost resources were strained in the effort to overthrow 
the Confederacy. It was the statesmanship of Mr. Seward, 
secretary of state, and the diplomacy of Mr. Adams, min- 
ister to the Court of St. James, which rescued the nation 
from imminent foreign peril. But they could not prevent 
the fitting out of the Alabama and of her ten sister corsairs 
in British ports, which swept American commerce from the 
sea. The final adjustment of the Alabama claims is narrated 
in the chapter on the British Empire. 

Question of the Northwestern Boundary (1872). — The 
water boundary on the northwestern frontier between the 
United States and the British possessions was still in dis- 
pute. A group of islands, of which San Juan, "the Cron- 
stadt of the Pacific," was the most important, formed the 
so-called Haro Archipelago in the waters between Vancou- 
ver Island and Washington Territory. To these islands 
both the United States and Great Britain laid claim. The 
question was submitted by the two interested parties to the 
German emperor for arbitration. His decision assigned 
the entire group to the United States. 

The Centennial Exhibition (1876). — This year the United 
States celebrated the hundredth anniversary of indepen- 
dence. It was felt that in no way could that great event 
be more fitly honored than by an exhibition in which all 
the nations of the world should be invited to take part. The 
appropriate spot for such a gathering was the historic city 
in which the Declaration of Independence had been signed. 



A.D. 1876-1877.] THE UNITED STATES 707 

With small assistance in the labor and cost on the part of 
the national government, the project was carried to a tri- 
umphant conclusion. The city of Philadelphia, Pennsyl- 
vania, and some of the thirteen original colonies were 
specially instrumental in its success. The exhibition was 
opened by President Grant. It was visited by 9,910,000 
persons. There were over 30,000 exhibitors. Spain and 
her colonies made a more numerous display than did any 
other foreign state. 

The Newfoundland Fisheries. The Halifax Award (1877) . 
— The treaties with Great Britain after the Revolutionary 
War and the War of 1812 left the rights of American fisher- 
men off the coast of Newfoundland in a state of irritating 
uncertainty. Nor did subsequent efforts to adjust their 
grievances meet much success. The definite specifications 
of the treaty of Washington (1871), it was claimed by the 
British government, granted greater advantages in the 
fisheries to the Americans than to its own subjects. It was 
decided that a commission of arbitration should determine 
the compensation which ought to be paid therefor by the 
United States. The two commissioners being unable to 
agree, the Austrian ambassador to London was invited to 
nominate a third member. He named the Belgian minister 
to the United States. Meeting at Halifax (1877) the arbi- 
trators decided, by a vote of two to one, that the United 
States should pay "$5,500,000 for the use of the fishery 
privileges for twelve years." 

The Presidential Election of 1876. — After a campaign of 
unusual vigor the result was disputed. Mr. Tilden, the 
democratic candidate, had received a plurality in the popu- 
lar vote of 250,000 over Mr. Hayes, his republican oppo- 
nent. But the election was to be decided by the votes of 
369 electors, chosen by the several states. The democratic 
party claimed 203 of these votes, allowing 166 to the repub- 
licans. The republicans claimed 185, allowing 184 to the 
democrats. The four votes of Florida, the eight votes of 
Louisiana and the seven votes of South Carolina were 
claimed by both parties. There were also difficulties as to 
the vote of Oregon. The Constitution provided no way for 
meeting the emergency of a contested presidential election. 
From November 7, 1876, until March 2, 1877, the whole 
country was in intense excitement. Any solution was 
preferable to civil war. An extraordinary commission was 



708 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 187(5-1883. 

created. It comprised five justices of the Supreme Court, 
five senators and five members of the House of Kepresenta- 
tives, and it was to decide. The commission consisted of 
eight republicans and seven democrats. By a strict party 
vote and a majority of one, Mr. Hayes was declared presi- 
dent. The entire nation at once accepted the verdict. It 
had passed through the most trying crisis in its political 
history. No severer test could have been applied to the 
patriotism and the love of peace of the American people. 

Assassination of President Garfield (1881). — General Gar- 
field had been chosen to succeed President Hayes and was 
inaugurated March, 1881. With Mr. Blaine, the secre- 
tary of state, he was about to take a train at the Baltimore 
and Potomac Railway station in Washington (July 21, 
1881) when he was shot down by a half-crazy politician. 
The murderer, disappointed in his hopes of securing the 
consul-generalship at Paris, had resolved upon this revenge. 
The president lingered between life and death, and in great 
suffering, until September 19. His unflinching patience 
and heroism, together with detestation of the crime, awoke 
profound and equal sympathy both at home and abroad. 

Civil Service Reform Bill (1883). — Appointment to civil 
office, even in the early days of the Republic, was based 
largely upon the principle of reward for party service. An 
incoming administration, on finding lucrative and important 
positions in the hands of political antagonists, replaced 
them by its own adherents. Thus a spoils system was 
rapidly developed. Under it a new executive was expected, 
and even required, to distribute among his own adherents 
the offices as a sort of conquered property. Furthermore, 
the incumbents were heavily assessed for contributions to 
party expenses. Various presidents denounced the abuse, 
with which none seemed strong enough to cope. The Na- 
tional Civil Service Reform League, founded in 1881, sought 
to substitute the spoils system by a merit system, deter- 
mined by competitive examination. After much agitation, 
in 1883, the Civil Service Reform Bill, which had been in- 
troduced by Senator Pendleton of Ohio, was passed. This 
act applied to more than 14,000 offices, about one-half of 
which were in departments at Washington, and in twenty- 
five specified custom offices, and the other half in twenty- 
three post-offices. The act also aimed at the suppression 
of political assessments among officers of the government. 



A.D. 1883-1892.] THE UNITED STATES 709 

The Bering Sea Controversy over the Seal Fisheries (1886- 
1898). — The United States claimed, by the purchase of 
Alaska, to have acquired exclusive rights in Bering Sea. 
To protect the fur seals, which were in danger of extermi- 
nation, it seized Canadian vessels engaged in the seal fishery 
in those waters (1886). The controversy arising was sub- 
mitted to international arbitration. The commissioners 
met at Paris (1893), and their decisions were in the main 
unfavorable to the contention of the United States. But 
they unanimously prescribed regulations which, if enforced 
by the governments of the United States and Great Britain, 
would have been sufficient to prevent the extinction of a 
valuable industry. In 1894 the Canadian sealers agreed to 
accept f 425,000 in full settlement of their claims against 
the United States, but the dispute is not yet closed. 

Trouble with Chili (1891-1892). —In the Chilian civil 
war (1891), which ended with the overthrow and suicide of 
President Balmaceda, the American minister had shown an 
injudicious and active sympathy for the defeated party. 
Afterwards he had afforded them an asylum at his legation 
and extended them his protection on their endeavor to leave 
the country. The Chilian authorities complained at this 
interference with their domestic affairs, but could obtain 
no redress from Washington. Soon afterwards some sail- 
ors of the American man-of-war, Baltimore, on landing at 
Valparaiso were attacked by a mob. Two sailors were 
killed and eighteen wounded. When satisfaction was 
demanded, the Chilian minister of foreign affairs, Senor 
Matta, gave an insulting reply. During the next month he 
fell from office. His successor instructed the Chilian min- 
ister at Washington to make an ample apology. Soon 
afterwards he requested the recall of the American minis- 
ter, Mr. Egan, as a persona non grata. The American 
government was dissatisfied with the investigation of the 
murder of the sailors, refused to withdraw Mr. Egan, sent 
Chili an ultimatum and prepared for war. On January 23, 
1892, President Harrison communicated a lengthy message 
to Congress, wherein he narrated the whole controversy in 
detail. On that same day, before the despatch of the presi- 
dential message, a humble and comprehensive apology was 
on its way from Chili, which prevented any further hostile 
demonstration. 

The Columbian Exhibition (1893). — America was discov- 



710 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1892-1893. 

ered by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The American 
government and people determined that the 400th anniver- 
sary of that event should be celebrated in a manner com- 
mensurate with its magnitude. It was decided to request 
all mankind to participate in a commemorative world's fair, 
to be held at Chicago, the metropolis of the northwest. In 
pursuance of an act of Congress, approved on April 25, 
1890, the president issued his official proclamation (Decem- 
ber 24), inviting all nations to cooperate in the celebration. 
With splendid military and civil ceremonies the grounds 
and buildings were dedicated to the grand undertaking in 
October, 1892. 

An international review, preliminary to the formal open- 
ing, was held in New York harbor (April 27, 1893). Span- 
ish warships towed facsimiles of Columbus' vessels, the 
Santa Maria, Nina and Pinta, and in the pageant the war- 
ships of G-reat Britain, Eussia, Germany, France and other 
nations took part. On the next day seamen and soldiers 
from the foreign men-of-war, in imposing parade, marched 
through Broadway and Fifth Avenue. 

On Monday, May 1, President Cleveland, attended by the 
vice-president and cabinet, opened the Exhibition at Chi- 
cago. The president, in a brief address, declared that the 
true significance of the scene was found in the universal 
brotherhood which it exemplified. Then he pressed the 
electric button which set in motion the many hundred pieces 
of machinery. In the entire area of QQQ> acres, more than 
142 acres were covered by buildings. Eighty-six princi- 
palities, colonies and nations were represented by exhibitors, 
who, during the summer, disposed of more than $10,000,- 
000 worth of the goods which they displayed. 

Nor was the convocation limited to the visible and mate- 
rial. There was no branch of human thought and activity 
which was not represented by international congresses con- 
vened. Ninety-five special committees watched over the 
general divisions of the purely intellectual departments and 
appointed advisory councils for each. It was a world's 
parliament as much as a world's exhibition. 

No words can do justice to, or give an idea of, the splendor 
and vastness of the whole, of the varied and exquisite 
architecture, or of the multitudes, representing all races, 
languages and lands, who thronged through its gates. On 
Chicago Day more than 700,000 persons were present. 



A.D. 1893-1896.] THE UNITED STATES 711 

Before it closed, on October 30, 1893, it had been visited by 
over 24,000,000 people. "Stupendous in conception and 
admirable in execution," nothing like it had ever been 
presented to mankind. 

The Venezuela Message (December 17, 1895). — A dis- 
pute had long been going on between Great Britain and 
Venezuela. The latter country asserted that the former 
had encroached upon her territory and was arbitrarily ad- 
vancing the boundary of British Guiana to her own advan- 
tage. It was believed in America that Great Britain was 
trampling upon the rights of a weak South American state. 
In a despatch to the British government (July 20, 1895), 
Mr. Olney, the American secretary of state, had recapitu- 
lated the points at issue and asked for a definite answer as 
to whether the British government would submit the Vene- 
zuelan boundary question in its entirety to impartial arbi- 
tration. He added, in conclusion, that a reply in the 
negative would contribute to embarrass the future relations 
of the United States and Great Britain. 

The answer of Lord Salisbury, the prime minister (No- 
vember 26), was a general denial of the Monroe doctrine as 
a doctrine of international law. Furthermore he asserted 
that, even were it to be regarded, that doctrine had no ap- 
plication to the case. He concluded by firmly refusing to 
even entertain the idea of arbitration. 

In consequence of this definite reply. President Cleve- 
land (December 17) sent a special message to Congress. 
He expressed his deep disappointment that Great Britain 
persisted in her determination not to submit the matter to 
arbitration. He declared it incumbent on the United 
States, by investigation, to determine "the true divisional 
line between the Republic of Venezuela and British Guiana." 
Then, after having once ascertained what of right belonged 
to Venezuela, he declared that it would be "the duty of 
the United States to resist by every means in its power" 
any aggression upon, or appropriation of the lands of that 
state. This was a strongly worded and a significant docu- 
ment. It was received with applause and approval in Con- 
gress, but popular sentiment was divided. Many supposed 
that Great Britain would fight rather than yield. In Janu- 
ary, 1896, in accordance with his message, President Cleve- 
land appointed a boundary commission to investigate and 
determine the true frontier. However, before this com- 



712 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1897-1898. 

mission reported, Lord Salisbury had abandoned his former 
attitude and consented to a treaty of arbitration between 
Venezuela and Great Britain. This treaty was finally rati- 
fied on June 15, 1897. All for which the American gov- 
ernment had contended was attained. 

Annexation of Hawaii (1898). — A revolution in the 
Sandwich Islands, or Hawaii, dethroned Queen Liliuoka- 
lani (January 16, 1893). At the request of the jDrovisional 
government, the American minister landed a body of ma- 
rines and proclaimed a protectorate of the Unirted States 
over the islands (February 1). President Harrison strongly 
advocated their annexation, but the necessary two-thirds 
vote in the Senate could not be obtained. Mr. Cleveland, 
who soon again became president, opposed the measure 
throughout his entire term. With the advent to power of 
President McKinley the annexationists, both in Hawaii and 
the United States, redoubled their efforts They were 
strongly supported by Mr. Dole, the Hawaiian president. 
The war with Spain, when Americans were compelled to 
fight in the far Pacific, showed still more clearly the impor- 
tance of those islands to the United States. This time a 
two-thirds vote in both Houses approved annexation, and 
the bill was signed by President McKinley (July 7, 1898). 
Five years of delay had only increased the desire for their 
acquisition. The accomplished fact was received with gen- 
eral favor in both countries. On August 16 the Hawaiian 
flag was lowered from the official staff in Honolulu and the 
Stars and Stripes took its place. 

War with Spain (1898). — It was unfortunate for Span- 
ish supremacy that Cuba was hardly more than 130 miles 
distant from the United States. The contrast was presented 
close at hand of two forms of administration, the direct op- 
posite of each other. On the mainland self-government by 
the people afforded material prosperity and security of life 
and fortune. On the island a despotic and corrupt colonial 
system ignored local interests and sought only the advantage 
of Spain, remote on the other side of the ocean. Neither 
civil, political nor religious liberty existed in Cuba. The 
Cubans were excluded from the public offices, which were 
filled by Spaniards, and oppressed by a heavy taxation to 
support the army and navy which held them in subjection. 
Their discontent grew more sullen through generations. 
They did not wish to becoine Americans, but it was natural 



A.D. 1898.] THE UNITED STATES 713 

in the misery of their condition that they desired to possess 
and exercise some of the natural rights which their Ameri- 
can neighbors enjoyed. 

During this century they have made many conspiracies 
and insurrections. After Spain overthrew her Bourbon 
monarchy, in 1868, the Cubans at Manzanillo made a decla- 
ration of independence. Most of the South American states 
recognized them as belligerents. Spain was able to put down 
this movement only by sending to the island 150,000 sol- 
diers under her ablest commanders. The suppression of 
this rebellion required twelve years. While it went on, 
trade decreased, agriculture was neglected, but the taxes 
were more than doubled. 

During the period of partial tranquillity that ensued vari- 
ous measures of relief were proposed by the Spanish gov- 
ernment. But as to enforcement they remained a dead 
letter. Slavery however was abolished in 1886. 

The last insurrection assumed alarming proportions in 
1894. The insurgents husbanded their strength. Avoid- 
ing pitched battles, they devastated the country and cut off 
Spanish detachments wherever they could. The reprisals 
of both parties were merciless. A reign of terror prevailed 
except in the larger and garrisoned towns. Sugar and 
tobacco were the two chief Cuban products. Incendiarism 
ruined the sugar cultivation in 1896. A decree of the Cortes 
(May 12, 1896) forbade the exportation of the tobacco leaf 
except to Spain. Tobacco leaf exports, over 30,000,000 
pounds in 1895, shrank to half that amount in 1896. Thus 
the fairest island in the New World was rapidly relapsing 
into savagery and becoming a desert. Marshal Campos was 
despatched with large forces to reenforce the Spanish armies 
and restore order (April 2, 1895). General Weyler was 
sent to supersede him ten months later, but was in turn re- 
placed by General Blanco in October, 1897. The latter 
came with a proposition of autonomy for the island. In- 
cessantly a procession of warships was steaming across the 
ocean, bringing arms and ammunition and men. But the 
insurrection was not put down. Instead of showing weak- 
ness it developed strength. 

An American instinctively sympathizes with any people 
fighting against oppression and for freedom. Sympathy 
for the Cubans was expressed, as it had been many times 
before, in party platforms, at public meetings, in the press 



714 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1898. 

and pulpit and on the floor of Congress. With expense and 
difficulty the American government has sought through this 
century to enforce its neutrality laws. When general ex- 
citement prevails, this task is always difficult, even for a 
limited time. But when the disturbing causes are perma- 
nent and without alleviation, its performance becomes well- 
nigh impossible. Moreover, in such abnormal condition of 
affairs, a nation, so intimately involved in both its material 
and moral interests as the United States, has not only re- 
sponsibilities to a foreign government, but duties to its own 
people and itself. 

The American people did not wish for war; the desire, 
formerly existing for the annexation of Cuba, had died 
away, but they were resolved that the horrors in Cuba 
should cease. 

None the less. President Cleveland and his successor, 
President McKinley, strictly observed their international 
obligations. A proclamation of warning was issued (June 
12, 1895) to Cuban filibusters, and several men were arrested 
and lodged in jail. Another proclamation enforced neutral- 
ity (August, 1896). During that year the revenue officers 
captured seven filibusters and intercepted two expeditions. 
Many state conventions and legislatures in 1895 demanded 
that the Cubans should be recognized as belligerents. Eeso- 
lutions to that effect passed the Senate by sixty-four votes 
to six and the House by 244 to twenty-seven (April, 1896). 
Such recognition to become effective required the assent of 
the chief magistrate, who withheld his approval. President 
McKinley, in 1897 and 1898, steadfastly opposed recognition 
of the independence of Cuba. But Spain was incensed at 
the persistence of the insurgents, at the impossibility of re- 
ducing them to subjection, and at the sympathy shown both 
them and the starving reconcentrados, or non-combatants, 
by the American people. Every communication from the 
American government was received with ill-disguised 
distrust and aversion. 

To the mounting wave of popular sentiment, which 
seemed likely to sweep everything before it, two important 
events gave added volume. The first was of diplomatic 
gravity. A letter was written by Senor Dupuy de Lome, 
Spanish minister at Washington, which not only referred 
with insulting terms to the American chief magistrate, but 
contained an intimation that Spain was not acting in good 



A.D. 1898.] THE UNITED STATES 715 

faith and was seeking, by trickery in her negotiations, to 
deceive the United States. This letter fell into the hands 
of the insurgents and was published (February 8, 1898). 
Senor de Lome resigned, but he had caused every after act 
of his government to be regarded with suspicion. This in- 
cident was trivial compared with an awful subsequent 
tragedy. On February 15, the American battleship Maine, 
while at anchor in the harbor of Havana, was destroyed by 
explosion. More than 250 officers and sailors were in- 
stantly killed. The American court of inquiry were of 
opinion that a submarine mine caused the catastrophe. But 
whether discharged by accident or design and, in the latter 
case, by whom, is unknown. 

In view of possible contingencies the House of Eepresen- 
tatives, by a unanimous vote, placed $50,000,000 at the 
unqualified disposal of the president as a special fund for 
national defence (March 8). The Senate on the following 
day unanimously approved the same. After long delay, 
which contrasted strongly with the feverish impatience of 
the people, President McKinley sent an elaborate message 
on Cuban affairs to Congress (April 11). Temperate but 
firm in tone, it asked authority for the president to termi- 
nate hostilities between Spain and Cuba and to secure tran- 
quillity to the tormented island. On April 19 both Houses 
recognized Cuban independence, invited Spain to withdraw 
her land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters, and 
directed the president to employ the forces of the United 
States to carry these resolutions into effect. The next day 
an ultimatum was cabled to Madrid. Without waiting for 
its reception, the Spanish Cabinet informed the American 
minister, G-eneral Woodford, that Spain regarded the action 
already taken by the United States as a declaration of 
war. 

The war thus began on April 21. On July 26, through 
M. Cambon, French ambassador at Washington, Spain 
opened negotiations for peace. The conflict had then lasted 
only ninety-six days. Its continuance had been an unbroken 
succession of calamities for Spain. To an American it is 
rendered memorable by the victory of Admiral Dewey in 
Manila Bay (May 1) when the fleet of Admiral Montojo 
was destroyed, by the annihilation of the squadron of 
Admiral Cervera off Santiago harbor (July 3), and by the 
surrender of the city of Santiago and of the adjacent dis- 



716 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY [a.d. 1898. 

trict with all the troops and munitions of war (July 17). 
The whole country knows the whole story by heart. 

The peace protocol was signed (August 12) by Mr. Day, 
American secretary of state, and M. Cambon in behalf of 
Spain. Spain had been utterly crushed and was hopeless.. 
Neither had she received real friendship from a single 
European nation in the hour of her necessity and distress. 
With generosity, rare on the part of a victorious nation, the 
United States imposed no pecuniary indemnity upon the 
vanquished. But Spain was to abandon all her trans-At- 
lantic possessions and withdraw from the New World. A 
suspension of hostilities was immediately ordered. But on 
the next day, before the news could reach them, the Ameri- 
can forces in the Philippines had attacked and captured the 
city of Manila. 

This last war was far more than a mere armed struggle 
between two peoples. However long delayed, the conflict 
was sure to come between the democratic spirit of America 
and the mediaeval spirit of Spain. The continent was not 
broad enough for the permanent continuance of two so an- 
tagonistic systems face to face. When the two systems 
clashed in battle, no doubt was possible as to the ultimate 
result. But that the ships and sailors of the United States 
were destined in contribution to that result to achieve the 
first great naval victory ever won by a Christian nation on 
the waters of the Pacific, no man could have foretold. If 
the issues at stake were in their application world-wide, so 
too was the arena. 

An attempt at this early date to sum up the consequences 
would be presumption. Two at least are already sure. At 
home, in the United States points of compass are blotted 
out. The lingering wounds of the Civil War are healed. 
For Americans there is now neither a north, a south, an 
east nor a west. There is only one common .country. 
Abroad, the republic has made itself respected and recog- 
nized as it never was before. Its potent voice in behalf of 
humanity and freedom has been heard around the globe. 
The State can no longer remain isolated in the Western se- 
clusion if it would. Almost against her will America has 
taken her seat in the parliament of the nations. 



INDEX 



Abbassides, dynastj' of the, 197. 

Abd el Kader, holy war of, 506, 536. 

Abd-el Kader, Emir, 641. 

Abderrahinan I, 198. 

Abderrahinan II, 198. 

Abderrahman III, 198, 243. 

Abd-ul Aziz, Sultan, 629, 642-645, 651. 

Abd-ul Hamid II, Sultan, 629, 645-648. 

Abd-ul Keriin Pasha, 630. 

Abd-ul Medjid, Sultan, 522, 624, 638-641. 

Abdur Eahman, Emir, 694. 

Abelard, 224, 248. 

Abolition of army purchase, 689. 

Abolition of University Religious Tests 

Act, 689. 
Abou-Bekr, 195. 
Abou Naked, Sheik, 639. 
Aboukir, battle of, 432. 
Abraham, 38. 
Absalom, 41. 

Abyssinia, Italians in, 615. 
Acha?fln League, 84. 
Achilles, 53, 57, 58. 
Achmet Pasha, 522, 641. 
Acropolis, 69. 
Actium. battle of, 132. 
Acton, 411. 

Adams, Charles Francis, 684, 706. 
Addison, 386. 

Adis Abeba, treaty of, 615. 
Adolf, Grand Duke of Luxemburg, 667. 
Adowa, battle of, 615. 
Adrian VI, Pope. 334. 
Adrianople, treaty of, 491, 623. 
^gidius, 188. 

^gos Potamos, battle of, 72. 
^milianus, 155. 
^rarium, 136. 
jEschines, 81, 86. 
^schylus, 59, 86. 
Aetius, 182, 187. 
Affre, Monseigneur, 558. 
Afg-han war. 6S5. 

Africa, occupation by Europeans, 692-693. 
Agamemnon, 53, 57." 
Age of Alexander, 80, 81. 
Age of Pericles, 69. 
Agesilaus, King of Sparta, 72, 78. 
Agincourt. battle of, 270. 
Agnes de Meranie, 254. 
Agricola, 146. 
Agrippa, 134, 137. 
Ahmes the Liberator, 26. 



Ahriman, 45, 46. 

Aix, battle of, 109. 

Aix-la-Chapelle, peace of (1668), 373 ; treaty 
of (1748), 39T ; Congress of (1818), 473. 

Aiznadin, battle of, 196. 

Akiba, 149. 

Alabama, privateer, 683, 706. 

Alabama Claims, 684-685. 

Alidja Dagh, battle of, 629. 

Alani, 180, 181. 

Alais, peace of, 361. 

Alaric, 180, 181. 

Alaric II, 184, 189. 

Alaska, 699. 

Alberoni, Cardinal, 393. 

Albert, prince-consort, 679, 683. 

Albert, Archduke, 584. 

Albert, " Ulysses of the North," 395- 

Albert II of Germany, 282. 

Albert the Great of Germany, 249. 

Albigenses, 177, 242. 

Albinus, 152. 

Albizzi, 278, 305. 

Albuquerque, 314, 315. 

Alcantara, Order of, 245, 301. 

Alcestis, 56. 

Alcibiades, 71, 72. 

Alcmeonidfe, the, 64. 

Alcuin, 207. 

Aldus Manutius, 318. 

Alemanni, 155, 157, 159, 170, 173, 178, 184, 
187, 188, 189, 190, 209. 

Alexander the Great, 18, 28, 34, 37, 43, 78- 
81. 

Alexander III, Pope, 232. 

Alexander IV, Pope, 275, 276. 

Alexander VI, Pope, 311, 312. 

Alexander I, Tsar, 436, 467, 472, 473, 495. 

Alexander II, Tsar, 570, 601, 625-634. 

Alexander III, Tsar, 635-636, 657. 

Alexander I, Prince uf Roumania, 650. 

Alexander Arigos, 82. 

Alexander of Bulgaria, Prince (Prince Al- 
exander of Battenburg), 656, 657. 

Alexander Severus, Roman emperor, 154. 

Alexandra of Denmark, Princess, 663. 

Alexandria, 78, 124, 131, 132, 149, 196, 520, 
521, 686. 

Alexis, son of Peter the Great, 392. 

Alfred the Great 215. 

Algeria, Algiers, 496, 536, 698. 

Al-Hakam I, 198. 

All, 195, 196. 



717 



718 



INDEX 



Ali Pasha, 642, 644. 

Ali Pashi of Yanina, 520. 

Alix of Hesse, Princess, 636. 

Aljubarotta, battle of, 275. 

Allia, battle of the, 94. 

Alliance, Holy, 458-459, 461-479, 485, 489 ; 

of the Three Emperors, 601 ; Triple, 603. 
Alma, battle of, 569. 
Almadeo, Prince, 671. 
Al-Mamoun, 197. 
Almanzor, 197, 198, 199, 243. 
Almohades, 244, 245. 
Almoravides, 244. 
Alp Ar.slan, 235, 
Alphonso V of Aragon, 279. 
Alphonso X of Castile, 273, 280. 
Alphonso XI of Castile, 273. 
Alphonso XII of Spain, 671-672. 
Alphonso XIII of Spain, 673. 
Alphonso V, king of the Two Sicilies, 

274. 
Alsace, 421, 579, 601. 
Althing, 662. 
Altransttidt, 390. 
Alva, Duke of, 330, 342, 346. 
Alvinzi, General, 431. 
Amalric, 184. 
Amar, 427. 
Amasis, 28. 

Amba Alaghi, battle of, 615. 
Amboise, edict of, 341 ; plot of, 341. 
Ambrose, Saint, 169, 174. 
Amelia oi^ Greece, Queen, 658, 659. 
Amenophis III, 26. 
America, discovered, 315 ; EngUsh in, 402- 

403. 
American Revolution, 403. 
American Civil War, 627, 6S2-683, 704- 

705. 
Amiens, siege of (1598), 348 ; peace of 

(1802), 436. 
Amisus, 116. 
Amos, 42. 
Ampere, 481. 

Amphyctionlc Councils, 54. 
Amrouk, 196. 
Amyot, 319. 
Anabaptists, the, 466. 
Anagdello. battle of, 312. 
A nam, 593. 
Anaxagoras, 69. 
Ancona, 501. 

Andrassy, Count Julius, 619, 628, 632. 
Andrew II of Hungary, 239. 
Andujar, ordinance oi, 478. 
Angles, 178, 183, 184. 
Anglican Church, 325, 326. 
Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, 184. 
Angora, battle of, 12, 285. 
Anne of Austria, 362, 363. 
Anne of Beaujeu, 293, 294. 
Anne Boleyn, 325. 
Anne Dubourg, 340. 
Anne of England, Queen, 399. 
Anselm, Saint, 224. 
Antalcidas, treaty of, 73. 
Antinous, 149. 
Antioch, 150, 156, 171, 236, 237, 238. 



Antiochus, 103. 

Antonelli, Cardinal, 563, 607. 

Antonines, 147-151. 

Antoninus, 150. 

Antony, 127-132. 

A oils, battle of, 83, 100. 

Apapu, 25. 

Apelles, 80. 

ApoUodorus, 69. 

Apollonius of Tyana, 163, 

Apostohcals, 493, 511. 

Appius Claudius, 91. 

Appomattox Court House, 705. 

Apries, 2S. 

Aquileia, 150, 151; destroyed by Attila, 182. 

Aquinas, Saint Thomas, "249. 

Aquitani, 122. 

Aquitanians, 203. 

Arabi Pasha, Colonel, 686, 

Arabs, 193-199, 244, 309, 

Arago, 4S1, 

Aranda, 410. 

Aratus, 84. 

Arbaces, 47, 

Arbela, battle of, 79. 

Arbogast, 173, 187. 

Arcadion, convent of, 643. 

Arcadius, 174, ISO. 

Archimedes, 100. 

Architecture, Byzantine, 225 ; Gothic, 319 ; 
mediaeval, 215. 

Archons, 62. 

Areola, battle of, 431, 

Ardahan, 629, 632. 

Ardres, treaty of, 337. 

Areopagus, 63, 

Argyle, Duke of (1685\ 378 ; (1861), 683. 

Ariosto, 319. 

Ariovistus, 122. 

Aristides, 68. 

Aristodemus, 62, 

Aristomenes, 62. 

Aristophanes, 69, 86, 

Aristotle, 69, 81. 

Aries, 184. 

Armada, the Invincible, 347, 

Armagnacs, 268, 270. 

Armenia, 148 ; massacres in, 647, 688, 

Armoricum, 122. 

Army bill of 1862, 604. 

Arnaldo de Brescia, 231. 

Arndt. 449, 451, 469, 475, 585, 

Arnulf, 217, 227, 

Arques, battle of, 348. 

Arras, 356. 

Arrhideus, 82. 

Arrius Aper, 158. 

Artaphernes, 65. 

Artaxerxes Longimanus, 43 ; and the Athe- 
nians, 67. 

Artaxerxes II, 72. 

Arte veld, Jacques van, 264. 

Arteveld, PhiUp van, 268. 

Arts, Major and Minor, 277, 278. 

Arverni, 123. 

Aryans, 5-6, 51. 

As'calon, battle of, 237. 

Asia, Eussians in, 524 ; British progress 



INDEX 



719 



in, 525; occupation by Europeans gen- 
erally, 693-695. 

Aspromonte, engagement at, 611. 

Assam, 525. 

Assembly, French National or Constitu- 
tional, 4U-419 ; the Legislative, 420. 

Assizes of Jerusalem, 237. 

Assurnazirpal, 33. 

Assyrians, 32-35. 

Astarte, 36. 

Astyages, 47, 48. 

Ataulf, 181. 

Athanasiiis, Saint, 169. 

Athelstane, 215. 

Athens, 62 ; b.c. 594 to 510, 62-64 ; in Per- 
sian wars, 05-67 ; at her height, 6S-7U ; 
decline of power of, 71-72 ; Emperor 
Hadrian at, 149 ; Goths at, 156 ; and 
Cretan insurrection, 660. 

Atjeh, insurrection at, 667. 

Attains, 105. 

Attendolo, Sforza, 278. 

Attila, ISO, 182. 

Auerstadt, battle of, 443. 

Augereau, Marshal, 439. 

Augsburg, battle of, 217 ; peace of, 323, 
353 ; League of, 3S0. 

Augustine, Saint, 169, 181. 

Augustus. See Octavius Caesar. 

Augustus II, 390. 

Aurangzeb, 400, 401. 

Aurehan, 156. 

Ausculta Fill, 256. 

Ausgleich, 618, 619, 621. 

Austerlitz, battle of, 440. 

Austrasia, 190, 204. 

Austria, house of, obtains imperial crown, 
303 ; Souleiinan the Magnificent in, 335 ; 
division of house of, 337 ; in Thirty 
Years' War, 354, 355 ; in War of Span- 
ish Succession, 382, 383; War of Suc- 
cession, 390-397 ; and French Revolution, 
421-427; and Napoleon 1,430-431, 440, 
444, 452 ; Metternich real ruler of, 473 ; 
attitude toward Kussian domination in 
Turkey, 518 ; revolutionary outbreak of 
1848, 552 ; return to absolutism, 562 ; war 
with France in 1859, 571 ; war with 
Prussia of 1866, 583-584 ; in Triple Alli- 
ance, 603 ; and Hungary, 616-622 ; and 
United States, 701, 702. 

Austria-Hungary, 616-622. 

Austrian Succession, War of the, 396-397. 

Austro-Prussian War, 583-584. 

Avaris, 25. 

Avars, 205, 217. 

Averroes, 198, 199. 

Avesta, 45. 

Avicenna, 198. 

Avignon, Holy See at, 256. 

Avitus, 189. 

Azoth, 28. 

Baal, 35. 

Baal-Moloch, 36. 

Babylon, 32, 33, 34 ; taken by Cyrus, 48, 

Alexander at, 79. 
Bach, Alexander, 617. 



Bacon, Francis, 289, 328, 350, 888. 

Bacon, Roger, 249. 

Bade, Josse, 318. 

Badeni, Count, 622. 

Bagdad, 34 ; Caliphate of, 197. 

Baihaut, M., 595. 

Bailly, 418, 426. 

Balaclava, battle of, 569. 

Balbinus, 155. 

Balbo, Count, 533. 

Balboa, 315. 

Baldwin I and II, kings of Jerusalem, 237. 

Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, 236, 23a 

Baldwin of Bourg, 236. 

Baliol, John, 255, 263. 

Balkan States, 049-601. 

Ball, John, 269. 

Ballot Act, 689. 

Balmaceda, President, 709. 

Balta Linian, convention of, 650. 

Baltic canal, 606. 

Baltimore difficulty, 709. 

Baluze, 386. 

Balzac, 480. 

Bandiera brothers, 540. 

Bank of France, 435. 

Banner, General, 356. 

Bannockburn, battle of, 263. 

Bar, Confederation of, 405. 

Baratieri, General, 615. 

Barbarossa, 231, 238. 

Barbe-Marbois, 433. 

Barcelona, treaty of, 294. 

Bariatinski, Prince, 694. 

Barkochba, the Son of the Star, 149. 

Barnabites, 329. 

Barnet, battle of, 297. 

Barras, 426, 429, 430. 

Barrere, 426. 

Barrot, Odilon, 505, 547, 548. 

Bart, Jean, 380. 

Barthelemv, 433. 

Bassano, battle of, 431. 

Bassianus, 154. 

Bassompierre, Marshal de, 361. 

Bastard of Bourbon, 271. 

Bastarno?, 151. 

Bastile, fall of the, 415. 

Batthvanv, Count, 553. 

" Battle of the Giants," 332. 

Bautzen, battle of, 453. 

Bavaria, 205, 825, 398, 457, 513, 583, 600. 

Bayard, Chevalier, 333, 334. 

Bayezid, 629,632. 

Bayezid I, 284. 

Bayezid II, 308-309. 

Bayle, 386. 

Baylen, capitulation of, 447. 

Bazaine, Marshal, 577, 578. 

Beaconsfield, Lord. See Disraeli. 

Beaufort, Duke of, 363. 

Beauharnais, Eugene de, 442. 

Beaulieu, General, 431. 

Beaumont, £lie de, 481. 

Beauregard, General, 705. 

Beauvais, Vincent de, 249. 

Becket, Thomas ii, 253, 260-261. 

Bedford, English regent, 270. 



720 



INDEX 



Bedr, battle of, 194. 

Belcredi, 618. 

Belfort, 578, 579. 

Belg-fe, 122. 

Belgium, united with Holland, 456-457 ; 

separates from Holland, 500, 508-510 ; 

1830 to 1898, 665-666. 
Belgrade, 335 ; treaty of, 395 ; battle of, 396. 
Beloochistan, 694. 
Bern, General, 561, 562. 
Benedek, Marshal, .583. 
Benedict XI, Pope, 256. 
Benedict, Saint, 201. 
Benedictines, 386. 
Benefit of clergy, 260. 
Beneventum, Pyrrhus defeated at, 96. 
Beranger, 469, 475, 480. 
Berchet, 469. 
Bergen, battle of, 432. 
Bering Sea controversy, 688, 709. 
Berlin, Congress of, 621, 631-633, 685; 

University of, 449. 
Bernard, Saint, 237, 248. 
Bernard Saisset, 256. 
Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, 356. 
Bernardo del Carpio, 250. 
Bernardotte, Marshal (Charles XIV of 

Sweden), 439, 442, 452, 663. 
Bernetti, Cardinal, 516. 
Bernini, 387. 
Berri, Duchess de, 502. 
Berri, Duke de, 471. 
Berthier, intendant, 415. 
Berthier, Marshal, 439, 442. 
Bertrand de la Cueva, 300. 
Bessieres, Marshal, 439, 493. 
Beust, Count von, 618, 620, 665. 
Beuvron, Marquis de, 361. 
Beziers, massacre at, 242. 
Biagrasso, battle of, 334. 
Bibulus, 121. 
Bicoque, battle of, 334. 
Billaud-Varennes, 427. 
Biot, 481. 

Birmingham Union, 485. 
Bishop of Laon, 266. 
Bismarck, 575, 579, 582, 583, 585, 602-606, 

632. 
Black Prince, Edward the, 265, 267, 356. 
Black Sea, 525, 625, 627. 
Blake, Admiral, 370. 
Blanche of Castile, 254. 
Blanco, General, 674, 713. 
Blanqui, 597. 
Bleneau, battle of, 364. 
Blenheim, battle of, 382. 
Blockade, Continental, 443. 
Blois, Charles de, 265. 
Blois, treaty of, 312. 
Bliicher, 454. 
Boadicea, Queen, 143. 
Boccaccio, 277, 279. 
Bocchoris, King, 27. 
Bocchus, 108. 
Boers, 693. 
Boethius, 185. 
Bohemia, 282, 354-355, 396, 397, 398, 450, 

552-553, 583, 584, 620. 



Bohemond, 236. 

Boileau, 385. 

Boissy-d'Auglas, 433. 

Bolan Pass, 527, 528. 

Bolivar the Liberator, 486. 

Bonaparte, Elisa, 442. 

Bonaparte, Jerome, 442. 

Bonaparte, Joseph, 442, 444. 

Bonaparte, Louis, 442. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon. See Napoleon I, 

Bonaparte, Pauline, 442. 

Bonaventura, Saint, 249, 

Boniface, Count, 181. 

Boniface II, Marquis of Montferrat, 238. 

Boniface VIII, Pope (Saint Boniface), 201, 

255. 
Bonnemain, Madame de, 594. 
Bordeaux, Duke de, son of Duke of Berri, 

475. 
Boreslav I the Brave, King, 283. 
Boreslav III the Victorious, King, 233. 
Borgias, the, 306. 
Borneo, 696. 
Bosnia, Austria-Hungary acquires, 621, 

632. 
Bossuet, 321, 385. 
Boston, 408. 

Bosworth, battle of, 297. 
Bothwell, Earl of, 344. 
Botsaris, 489. 
Botta, M., 34. 
Bougainville, 408. 
Boulanger, General, 594. 
Boule, 658. 

Bourbaki, General, 578. 
Bourbon, Bastard, 271 ; Duke of, regent 

of France, 394. 
Bourbons, 359, 453, 454. 
Bourdaloue, 385. 
Bourdonnaie, M. de, 496. 
Bourgeois, M., 597, 598. 
Bourmont, M. de, 496. 
Bourmont, Marshal, 511. 
Bourqueney, M. de, 639. 
Bouteville,"361. 
Bouvines, battle of, 253. 
Boyne, battle of the, 380. 
Brabant, Revolution of, 509. 
Bracciolini, 279. 
Braganza, house of, 487, 676. 
Brahma, 19, 20. 
Brahmanism, 18-21. 
Bramante, 320. 
Brandenburg, margravate of, origin of 

Prussia, 217 ; Elector of, 354. 
Brasidas, 70, 71. 
Bravo, Gonzales, 670. 
Breda, Compromise of, 342. 
Bremen, 605. 
Br^tigny, treatv of, 266. 
Bright, John, 6S3, 687. 
Brisson, M., 597. 
Britain, 122, 141, 143, 146, 148, 153, 159, 

170, 183, 184. 
Broglie, Duke de, 589, 590, 592. 
Brongniart, 481. 
Bruce, David, 265. 
Bruce, Robert, 263. 



INDEX 



721 



Bruniaire, Eighteenth of, 433. 

Bnme (General), 432, (Marshal) 439, 464. 

Brunehaut, 190-191. 

Brunelleschi, 279, 319. 

Brunswick, Duke of, 423 ; state of, 513. 

Brussels, Congress of, 509. 

Brutus, lioman consul, 90. 

Brutus, Decimus, 126, 127, 129. 

Brydon, Dr., 527. 

Buchanan, President, 703. 

Buckholz, battle of, 204. 

Buckingham, Marquis of. See YiUiers. 

Buddhism, 11, 21-23, 

Button, 408. 

Bugeaud, General, 504, 536, 548. 

Bulgaria, 628, 654-658. 

Billow, General, 452. 

Bulwer, Su- Henry, 655, 701. 

Bundesrath, 600, 601. 

Bureau, Jean, 271. 

Burgoyne, General, 403. 

Burguudians, 178, 183, 185 ; and Arma- 

gnacs, 268. 
Burgundy, 183, 212, 251, 290, 291. 
Burke, Mr., 686. 
Burlingame, Anson, 703. 
Burmah, 525. 
Burrus, 141, 142. 
Burschenschaft, 470. 
Butt, Mr., 686. 
Byron, Lord, 489. 

Caboche, 268. 

Cabochian Ordinance, 268. 

Caboul, 526, 527. 

Oabral, Alvarez, 314, 

Cabrera, 512, 

Caculus, 109. 

Cadmus, 52. 

Cadoudal, Georges, 438. 

Ctbsar, Julius, consulship, 122 ; Gallic wars, 

122-123 ; civil war with Pompey, 123-124 ; 

dictator, 124-126 ; assassinated, 126, 
Cairo founded, 29. 
Cairoli, 614. 

Cajetano, papal legate, 322. 
Calais, siege of, 265. 
Calatanazor, battle of, 243. 
Calatrava, Order of, 245, 301, 
Calderari, 464. 
Calderon, 386. 

California, discovery of gold in, 700. 
Caligula, 140-141. 
Caliphate, 195-197, 
Calisthenes, 79. 
Calmar, Union of, 283. 
Calonne, 412. 

Calvin, 269, 289, 319, 322, 324. 
Camaldules, 329. 
Camarilla, 669. 
Cambaceres, 434. 
Cambon, M., 675, 715, 716. 
Cambrai, League of, 312 ; treaty of, 335. 
Cambyses, father of Cyrus, 47. 
Cambyses, son of Cyrus, 28, 48. 
Camillus, 93. 
Camisards, 382. 
Camoens, 314, 



" Camp of Refuge," 258. 

Campaubert, battle of, 453. 

Campo Formio, treaty of, 431. 

Campos, Maj-shal, 671, 673, 674, 713. 

Canada, 544. 

Canaris, 4S9. 

Candahar, 527. 

Canea, 660. 

Canna", battle of, 99. 

Canning, George, 478, 484, 485, 487, 488, 

489. 
Canning, Lord, 682. 
Canning, Sir Stratford, 490. 
Canosa, Prince di, 464. 
Canossa, 230. 

Cauovas del Castillo, 672, 678, 674. 
Canrobert, Marshal, 569. 
Canterbury, Archbishop of, 224, 260. 
Canute the Great, 215, 282. 
Canute VI, 282. 

Cape of Good Hope, discovery of, 314. 
Capetians, 251-257. 
Caprivi, 602. 

Captivity of Babylon, 256, 
Captivity of the Jews, 43. 
Capucins, 241, 329. 
Caracalla, 153. 
Caransius, 159. 
Caratheodoridi Pasha, 632. 
Carbo, 112. 
Carbonari, 464, 470. 
Caribert, 190. 
Carlist war, 669. 
Carlists, 493, 512, 513. 
Carloman, brother of Charlemagne, 204. 
Carloman, son of Charles Martel, 203. 
Carlos, Don, 493, 503, 511, 671, 672. 
Carlos I of Portugal, 676. 
Carlovingians, the, 203-213. 
Carlsbad, Congress of, 474. 
Carmen Sylva, 651. 
Carnot, Count, 425, 430, 433, 488. 
Carnot, M. Sadi, President, 594-596. 
Caroline of Naples, Queen, 411. 
Carrier, 426, 427. 
Carthage, 95-102, 196. 
Cartier, Jacques, 316. 
Cams, 158, 
Casaubon, 386. 
Casimir the Great, 283. 
Casimir-Perier, President of Council, 469, 

501, 
Casimir-Perier, President, 596-597. 
Cassini, 388. 
Cassiodorus, 185, 
Cassius, 126, 129. 
Castel, Senor, 671, 672, 
Castelnaudary, battle of, 362. 
Castes, Indian, 18, 19. 
Castiglione, battle of, 431, 
Castillon, battle of, 272. 
Castlereagh, 474, 478. 
Castracani, Castruccio, 278. 
Castro, John de, 315. 
Catherine II of Russia, 405-407, 410, 411, 

432, 524. 
Catholic League, 354. 
Catholic party in Belgium, 666. 



722 



INDEX 



Catholic Relief Bill, 484. 

Catholicism, and the Keformation, 821-328 ; 
restoration of, 329-331; and Philip 11, 
339-340 ; success of, in Netherlands and 
France, 341-343 ; conspiracies in Eng- 
land and France, 344 ; and Evangelical 
Union, 354 ; and Louis XIV, 375 ; and 
Charles II of England. 377; and James 
II, 377-378 ; and Napoleon, 437 ; reaction 
after Napoleon's downfall, 4(35-4(58 ; and 
French republic, 595 ; in Prussia (1873), 
602, 603; in Austria, 617; in Switzer- 
land, 664 ; in Belgium, 666 ; in Holland, 
667 ; in Spain, (569. 

Catholics massacred in the Lebanon, 639. 

Catiline, conspiracy of, 119-120. 

Cato, 101, 103, 120," 121, 123, 125. 

Cavaignac, General, 558, 559. 

Cavaliers, 368. 

Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 686. 

Cavour, Count, 570, 571, 608-611. 

Cauchy, 481. 

Caudine Forks, battle of the, 95. 

Cecrops, 52. 

Celestial Empire, S. 

Celsus, 138. 

Censors, 92. 

Centennial Exhibition, 706-707. 

Central America, 486. 

Central Committee, 587. 

Cepio, 104. 

Cerealis, 145. 

Cerisoles, battle of, 337, 

Cervera, Admiral, 715. 

Chorea, 141. 

Chaeronea, battle of. 76. 

Chalais, Count de, 361. 

Chalons, battle of, 182, 188. 

Chamber of Deputies, French, created, 
464. 

Chamberlain, Joseph, 687. 

Chambord, Count of (Henry V), 502, 589. 

Chamillart, 382. 

Championnet, General, 432. 

Champlain, 351. 

ChampoUion, 480. 

Chang dynasty, 9. 

Chansons de geste, 225. 

Chaiifion de Roland, 225. 

Charlemagne, 175, 186, 203-208. 

Charles II the Bald, of France, 210-211. 

Cliarles III the Simple, 212. 

Charles IV the Fair, 257. 

Charles V the Wise, (dauphin) 266, (king) 
2ti7. 

Charles VI of France, 268. 

Charles VII of France, 270, 271. 

Charles VIII of France, 293-294, 310-313. 

Charles IX of France, 340, 344. 

Charles X of France, 478-479, 496, 497. 

Charles the Fat, Emperor, 212, 227. 

Charles V, Emperor, 293, 312,324,332-387. 

Charles VI (Archduke Charles), Emperor, 
382, 396, 431, 432, 440. 

Charles VII, Emperor, 397. 

Charles I of England, 361, 366-369. 

Charles II of England, 370-371. 

Charles IV of Germany, 281. 



Charles II of Spain, 373, 381. 

Charles IV of Spain, 411, 444. 

Charles XII of Sweden, 390-891, 393. 

Charles XIV of Sweden. See Bernadotte. 

Charles XV of Sweden and Norway, 663. 

Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, 265, 
267. 

Charles of Anjou, king of Naples, 276. 

Charles of Hohenzollern, Prince, 651. 

Charles I (Prince Charles) of Koumania, 
651. 

Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 290- 
292. 

Charles the Lame of Aragon, 276. 

Charles Albert of Piedmont, 542, 554, 563, 
564, 608. 

Charles Martel, 196, 202. 

Chartists, 535, 679. 

Chasles, 481. 

Chateau Cambresis, treaty of, 338. 

Chateaubriand, 438, 466, 477, 489. 

Chatillon, 356. 

Chaucer, 250. 

Chen Lan Pin, 704. 

Chenier, Andre, 42T, 438. 

Chevreul, 481. 

Chicago, 710. 

Chitfa, battle of, 506. 

Childebert, 190. 

Chili, 486, 709. 

Chilian civil war, 709. 

Chilperic, 190. 

China, 8-15, 518, 529, 695; French war, 
593; England's war with, 681; and the 
United States, 703-704. 

Chinese-Japanese War, 695. 

Chinese Exclusion Act, 704. 

Chiozza, war of, 278. 

Christian of Brunswick, 355. 

Christian IV of Denmark, 355. 

Christian IX of Denmark, 583, 662. 

Christian Institutes, The, 324. 

Christianity and Roman emperors, 162- 
164. 

Christina of Spain, Queen, 673. 

Chrysoloras, 279. 

Chun, 8. 

Church, from its beginning to the Middle 
Ages, 162-164, 200-202 ; and the Empire, 
227-234; and Philip IV of France, 255- 
256 ; in the sixteenth century, 321 ; and 
the Reformation, 322-328. See Catholi- 
cism, Papacy. 

Cicero, 119-120, 128. 

Cid Rodrigo de Rivar, 244, 250. 

Cid, Corneilie's, 385. 

Cimabue, 279. 

Cimbri, 109. 

Cimon, 67, 68, 

Cinna, 112. 

Cinq Mars, 362. 

Circesium, battle of, 34. 

Circumcelliones, 171. 

Cisalpine Republic, 431, 439. 

Cisleithania, 619. 

Ci^iil Government, Locke's, 

Civil Service Reform Act, 689. 

Civil Service Reform Bill, 708. 



INDEX 



723 



Civil Service Reform League, 708. 

Civil War, American, 627, 682-683, 704- 

705; English, 368-369. 
Civilis, 145. 
Claude Lorraine, 386. 
Claude, Madame, 312. 
Claudius, 141, 156. 
Clausel, Marshal, 504. 
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 701. 
Cleauder, 151. 
Clearchus, 72. 
Clement III, Pope, 230. 
Clement V, Pope, 256, 276. 
Clement VII, Pope, 325. 
Cleomenes, 84. 
Cleon, 71. 

Cleopatra, 83, 124, 130, 132. 
Cleveland, President, 710, 711, 712, 714. 
Clisthenes, 64. 
Clive, Lord, 518. 
Clodimir, 190. 
Clodion, 187. 
Clodius, 122, 123, 
Clotaire, 190-191. 
Clotaire II, 191. 
Clotilda, Princess, 571. 
Clotilde, 188. 
Clovis, 180, 183, 188-189. 
Clusium,94. 
Coalitions against Napoleon I, 420-436, 

440-454. 
Cobden, Richard, 683. 
Cobden treaty, 682. 
Cocherel, battle of, 267. 
Code, of Draco, 62 ; Justinian, 186 ; Kha- 

nounname, 335; Napoleon, 435, 437, 

461 ; of Scania, 282, 283 ; Theodosian, 

185. 
Codrus, 53. 
Coeur, .Jacques, 271. 
Colbert, 372, 374, 375. 
Coligny, 340. 

College of Princes, 441 ; of Kings, 441, 
Colloquia of Erasmus, 318. 
Collot-d'Herbois, 426, 427. 
Colombia, 486. 
Colonna, 256. 

Columbian Exposition, 709-711. 
Columbus, Christopher, 301, 315. 
Commines, 293, 311. 

Committee of Public Safety, 425, 426, 427. 
Commodus, 151. 
Commons, 263. 

Commonwealth, English, 369-370. 
Commune of Paris (1792), 422-423, (1871) 

5ST-5S8. 
Concordat of 1855, 617, 618. 
Concordat of "Worms, 231. 
Concini, 360. 

Conde, 340, 342, 357, 363, 364, 374. 
Condottieri, 278, 305. 
Confucius, 9, 13-14. 
Congregation, the, 467. 
Congregation of the Index, 329. 
Congo Free State, 666, 693. 
Conon, 73. 

Conquest of Constantinople, The, 249. 
Conrad I of Germany, 227. 



Conrad II, 228. 

Conrad III, 231, 237. 

Conradin, 276. 

"Consequential Persons," cabal of the, 
363. 

Constance, treaty of, 232 ; Council of, 281. 

Constant, Benjamin, 438, 469. 

Constantine, African fortress, 504, 505. 

Constantine, Crown Prince, 660. 

Constantine, Roman emperor, 161-169. 

Constantine XIII, Emperor, 2S5. 

Constantine, Grand Duke, 495, 624. 

Constantinople, 12, 165, 172, 174, 185, 186, 
196, 235, 239, 284, 285, 304, 308, 491, 519, 
631. 

Constantius, 170. 

Constantius Chlorus, 159. 

Constitution, proposed Austrian, 566 ; Bel- 
gian, 665; Bulgarian, 656; in Denmark, 
510, 662 ; English, 258-263 ; French, of 
1791, 416, of Year III, 429, of Year VIII, 
434, of present republic, 589-590 ; in 
Greece, 658; in Holland, 667; Portu- 
guese, 487, 503, 5TC-577 ; proposed Rus- 
sian, 634, 635 ; Servian, 653, 654 ; in 
Sweden, 511 ; Swiss, 664-065 ; Turkish, 
646. 

Constitutional Assembly, French, 414-419 ; 
Austrian (1848), 562. 

Constitutional system in Prussia, 539-540. 

Constitutions of Clarendon, 260, 261. 

Consulate in France, 433-435. 

Consuls in Rome, 90. 

Continental Congress, 403. 

Convention, French National, 424, 426, 
429-430. 

Cook, Captain. 408. 

Copernicus, 320, 387. 

Corbie, 356. 

Corbulo, 143. 

Corday, Charlotte, 426. 

Cordeliers (religious order), 241 ; (Fi'ench 
political club), 423. 

Cordova, Caliphate of, 197, 198, 243, 299. 

Corinth, 85. 

Corn laws, 539. 

Corneille, 364, 885. 

Cornelius Palma, 148. 

Cornwallis, General, 403. 

Coroebus, 54. 

Coronea, battle of, 73. 

Corrupt Practices Act, 689. 

Corte Nuova, battle of, 233. 

Cortes, 274, 672. 

Cortes, Fernando, 315. 

Corti, Count, 632. 

Corvinus, Matthias, 303, 308. 

Corvus, Valerius, 94. 

Cossova, battle of, 284. 

Cotta, 116. 

Council of Nicaea, 164. 

Council of Ten, 277. 

Coupd'£tat of 1851, 560. 

Courier, Paul Louis, 469. 

Courtray, battle of, 257. 

Cousin, Victor, 469, 475, 480. 

Couthon, 426. 

Ooutras, battle of, 345. 



T24 



INDEX 



Couza, Colonel Alexander, 650, 651. 

Covenant, league of the, 36T. 

Grassus, 113, 1'23. 

Crecy, battle of, 265. 

Crescentius, 228. 

Cresoy, battle of, 323 ; peace of, 337. 

Cretan insurrections, 642, 647, 660. 

Creuzer, 480. 

Creveit, battle of, 398. 

Crimean War, 568-570, 624-625, 639-640, 

680-681. 
Crispi, 614, 615. 
Crcesus, 48. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 368-370, 
Cromwell, Richard, 370. 
Crusades, 235-246. 
Crystal Palace exhibition, 679, 680. 
Ctesiphon, 34, 148, 150. 
Cuba, 486, 673-675, 702, 712-716. 
Cujas, 319. 

Culturkampf, 602-603. 
Cunaxa, battle of, 72. 
Cursor, Papirius, 95. 
Cushites, 24, 32. 
Custine, General, 424, 426. 
Custozza, battle of, 563, 584, 612. 
Cuvier, 481. 
Cyaxares, 47. 

Cynocephalse, battle of, 84, 85, 103. 
Cyprus, 633, 685. 

Cyrus, king of the Persians, 34, 47-48. 
Cyrus, the younger, 72. 
Cyzicus, 116. 
Czechs. See Bohemia. 
Czrnagora. See Montenegro. 

Dacians, 148. 

Dagobert, 191. 

Dahomey, 596. 

Daiar, battle of, 629. 

D'Alembert, 410. 

Dalmati, 137. 

Damascus, captured by the Mahabites, 520. 

Danaus, 52. 

D'Angers, David, 480. 

Danilo, vladika of Montenegro, 652. 

D'Annonay, Seguin, 481. 

Dante, 250, 277, 279. 

Danton, 423, 424, 425, 426. 

Darboy, Monseigneur, 587. 

D'Argesson, 409. 

Darius, Persian king, 43. 

Darius, son of Hystaspes, king of Persia, 

49, 66. 
Darius, opponent of Alexander the Great, 

79. 
Darnley, 344. 

D'Artois, Count, 416, 421, 462, 478. 
Datis, 65. 

D'Aumale, Duke, 548, 549. 
Daunou, 438. 
David, 41. 

Davoust, Marshal, 439. 
Day, WilHam R., 716. 
"Day of Dupes," 362. 
Deak, Francis, 617, 618. 
Death Song, Korner's, 449. 
De Barante, 480. 



De Bonald, 466. 

Deborah, 40. 

Decalogue, 39, 40. 

Decameron, Boccaccio's, 277. 

Decebalus, 148. 

Decemvirate, 91. 

Decius, Roman consul, 95; his son, 95; 
another, 96. 

Decius, Roman emperor, 155. 

Declaration of Rights, English, 378; 
French, 415, 446. 

Decree of Berlin, 443. 

Dego, battle of, 431. 

Dejoces, 47. 

Delacroix, 480. 

Delaroche, 480. 

Delyannis, M., 659, 660. 

Dembe, battle of, 516. 

Dembinski, 561. 

De Maistre, Count, 466. 

Demosthenes, 70, 76, 84, 86. 

Denain, battle of, 382. 

D'Enghien, Duke, 438. 

Denmark, 326, 355, 510, 662-663. 

Depretis, 614. 

Derby, Lord, 682, 683. 

De Rem u sat, 480. 

De Sacy, Le Maistre, 480. 

Descartes, 269, 289, 328, 364, 386, 388. 

Deseze, 424. 

DesmouHns, Camille, 426. 

D'Estrees, Count, 374. 

De Thou, 362. 

Detmold, battle of, 205. 

Devas, 20. 

De Vigny, 480. 

Dewey, Admiral, 715. 

Dexippus, 156. 

D'Harcourt, 356. 

Dictatorship in Rome, 90. 

Diderot, 410. 

Didier, king of the Lombards, 204. 

Didlus Juhanus, 152. 

Digest of Justinian, 186. 

Diocletian, 158-161. 

Directory, 430-433. 

Discoxirse on Method, 385. 

Disarmament, British court proposes 
European, 571 ; suggested by Russia, 
637. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, 682, 683, (Lord Bea- 
con sfield) 632, 633, 685, 686, 689-690. 

Divine Right, 413 ; Louis XIV personifi- 
cation of monarchy by, 383 ; William II 
of Germany and government by, 604. 

Djeddah, massacres at, 641. 

Doctrinaires, 505. 

Dole, Hawaiian president, 712. 

Dominicans, 241. 

Domitian, 146. 

Donatists, 171. 

Don Quixote, Cervantes', 386. 

Doomsday Book, 259. 

Dorians, 53. 60. 

D'Orleans, Gaston, 362. 

D'Ornano, Marshal, 361. 

Dorylfeum. battle of, 236. 

Dorylaos, 116. 



INDEX 



725 



Douay, General, 576. 
Downs, battle of the, 364. 
Draco, code of, 62. 
Drat,'oujanoff, General, 597. 
Drake, Sir Francis, 346. 
Drain Dagh, battle of, 629. 
Dresden, treaty of, 397. 
Dreyfus. Captain, 598. 
Druses, 639, 641. 
Drusus, 110, 111, 137. 
Drvden, 386. 

i:)ubois. Cardinal, 392, 393-394. 
Du Cange, 386. 
Duces, Koger, 434. 
IKifaure, M., 590, 591. 
Dufferin, Lord, 648. 
Duguesclin, 267, 273. 
Dulong, 481. 
Dumas, novelist, 480. 
Dumas, chemist, 481. 
Dumoulin, 319. 
Dumouriez, General, 424, 425. 
Dunbar, battle of, 263, 369. 
Dunois, Count of, 271. 
Duns Scotus, 249. 
Dupin, the elder, 469. 
Dupleix, 400. 
Dupont, General, 447. 
Dupuy, M., .596. 
Duquesne, 374. 
Diirer, Albert, 320. 
D'Uzes, Duchess, 594. 

East Anglia, 184. 

East India Company, English, 351, 400, 
527, 528, 681, 682. 

East Indies, Dutch, 667. 

East Indies, French Company of the, 372. 

Eastern Question, 518-531. 

Eastern Roumelia, Province of, 632, 656, 
657. 

Ebroin, 192. 

Ecbatana, 47, 79. 

Eccelino de Romana, 234. 

Ecnomos, naval battle at, 93. 

i^couen, edict of, 341. 

Ecumenical Council, 612. 

Edge Hill, battle of, 368. 

Edhera Pasha, 660. 

Edict of Nantes, 348, 351; revocation of, 375. 

Edmund II Ironsides, 215. 

Edward the Confessor, 258. 

Edward I of England, 263. 

Edward II, 263. 

Edward III, 257, 264, 267. 

Edward IV, 291, 292, 296. 

Edward VI, 326. 

Edward the Black Prince. See Black 
Prince. 

Egan, Mr., 709. 

Egbert the Great, 215. 

Eginhard, 207. 

Egmont, Count, 342. 

Egypt, 24-31, 82-83; made a' Roman prov- 
ince, 132 ; Louis IX in, 240 ; Napoleon 
in, 240 ; French and English control 
finances of, 592 ; occupied by British, 
647, 686. 



Ehresburg, battle of, 227. 

Ehud, 40. 

Elba, Napoleon at, 454. 

Eleanor Galigai, 360. 

Eleanor of Guyenne, 237, 260. 

Eleanor of Provence, 262. 

Electoral Union, 303. 

Elena, battle of, 630. 

Eli, 40. 

Elijah, 42. 

Elisha, 42. 

Elizabeth, Madame, 426. 

Elizabeth of England, Queen, 826, 840, 344, 
347, 350, 365, 689. 

Elizabeth of Rouraania, Queen, 651. 

Emancipation of slaves by British Parlia- 
ment, 508. 

Empire, Assyrian, 32-35; British, 678; 
Charlemagne's, 205 ; Chinese, 8-13 ; of 
the East founded, 164 ; of the Franks, 
200-208; first French, 438-454; second 
French, 567-577 ; German founded (887), 
227, dissolved, 441 ; modern German, 
578, 586, 600-606; Macedonian, 79-80; 
Ottoman, 638-648; Persian, 48-49; 
Roman, 134-175. 

Employers' Liability Bill, 689. 

Encyclopedists, the, 409. 

England, Northmen In, 215; invaded by 
Normans, 258 ; 1066 to 1327, 259-263 ; in 
Hundred Years' War, 264-272; progress 
of royalty in, 295-298 ; the Reformation 
in, 325-326 ; Catholic conspiracies In, 
344; revolution in, 877-399; in Seven 
Years' War, 897-398 ; colonial power of, 
399-401 ; and America, 402-403, 450, 451 ; 
Scotland united with, 899 ; in India, 
400^01, 685; against Napoleon, 436, 454; 
progress of, in Asia, 525 ; in the Crimean 
War, 568, 680; 1848 to 1898, 678-690. 
See Britain. 

Ennodius, Bishop, 185. 

Epaminondas, 73, 74. 

Ephors, 61. 

Epicharmes, 86. 

Epiphanes, 83. 

Erasmus, 318, 319, 321. 

Erfurt, interview of, 444. 

Ernroth, General, 657. 

Esarhaddon, 33. 

Eschenbach, Wolfram de, 249, 250. 

Esdras, 43. 

Espartero, Marshal, 513, 669, 670. 

Essay on Indifference, 466. 

Essex, 184. 

Etaples, treaty of, 294. 

Ethelred, 215. 

ifetienne, 469. 

Euclid, 199. 

Eudes, son of Robert the Strong, 212. 

Euergetes, 88. 

Eujimio di Messina, Pellico's, 469. 

Eugene, Prince, 382, 893, 396. 

Eugenie, Empress, 567, 576, 577, 648. 

Eugenius, pagan orator, 173. 

Eugenius IV, Pope, 821. 

Eumaeus, 56. 

Euripides, 69, 86. 



726 



INDEX 



Evangelical Union, 854. 

Evora, Order of, 245. 

Exposition, International, in London, 679- 

680 ; in Paris (1867), 578-574, (1878) 591 ; 

in Philadelphia, 706-707; Columbian, 

709-711; of 1900, 598. 
Eylau, battle of, 443. 
Eyre, Governor, 682. 

Fabius, 104. 

Fabius Maximus, 95. 

Falk, Dr., 602. 

Falkirk, battle of, 263. 

Fatimites, 29, 195, 197. 

Faubourg Saint Antoine, battle of the, 364. 

Faure, M. Felix, President, 597-599. 

Favre, Jules, 577, 578. 

Federal Assembly, Swiss, 664. 

Federal Council, German, 600, 601. 

Federal Council, Swiss, 664. 

Fehrbellin, battle of, 395. 

Felton, John, 367. 

Fenelon, 385, 410. 

Fenian movement, 684. 

Ferdinand IV, Emperor, 552, 553, 554. 

Ferdinand of Aragon, 274, 300-301. 

Ferdinand of Austria, 335. 

Ferdinand II of Austria, 354-355. 

Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Prince (Prince Fer- 
dinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha), 657-658. 

Ferdinand IV of Castile, 273. 

Ferdinand the Catholic, 311, 312, 313, 332. 

Ferdinand II of Naples, 311, 515, 516, 542, 
554, 563, 607, 610. 

Ferdinand VII of Portugal, 488. 

Ferdinand of Roumania, Prince, 651. 

Ferdinand, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 
676. 

Ferdinand VII of Spain, 444, 464, 471, 472, 
478, 503, 511, 669. 

Ferrara, 515, 537. 

Ferretti. Cardinal, 542. 

Ferry, Jules, 592, 593. 

Festival of the Federation, 417. 

Feth Ali, 526. 

Feudalism, in China, 9 ; European, 219- 
226. 

Fichte, 421, 449. 

Field of the Cloth of Gold, 333. 

Fieschi, 503. 

Fiesole, battle of, 181. 

Fillmore, President, 703. 

Fimbria, 116. 

Fire of London, 377. 

First Consul, Bonaparte as, 434-438. 

Fiscus, 136. 

Flaminius, Titus Quintus, 103. 

Flavians, 144-146. 

Flemings, insurrection of the, 256, 257. 

Fleurus, battle of, 381. 

Fleury, 394. 

Flodden Field, battle of, 313. 

Floquet, M., 594. 

Florence, 277, 278, 279, 305, 612. 

Florida, privateer, 683. 

Foix, Gaston de, 313. 

Folkungs, dynasty of the, 283. 

Fontaine Franfaise, battle of, 348. 



Fontanet, battle of, 210. 

Forbach, battle of, 577. 

Forey, General, 571. 

Formigny, battle of, 272. 

Fornova, battle of, 311, 

Fort Sumter, 704. 

Fortescue, Chancellor, 413. 

Fouche, 426, 427, 

Foulon, 415. 

Foulques, 238. 

Fourier, 482. 

Fourierists, 502. 

Fourtou, M. de, 590. 

Fox, George, 443. 

Foy, General, 469, 479, 

France, foundation of modern state of, 
211 ; boundaries in 1100, 223 ; formation 
of kingdom of, 251-257 ; in the Hundred 
Years' War, 264-267, 269-272 ; royalty 
in, 289-294; the Keformation in, 325; 
Catholics in, 344 ; reorganization of, by 
Henry IV, 351-352; in Thirty Years' 
War, 356-357 ; completion of monarchy 
in, 360-364 ; under Louis XIV, 372-376, 
380-384; letters and arts in, 385-386; 
in Seven Years' War, 397-398; Revo- 
lution, 413-427 ; under Napoleon I, 
437-454; liberalism in, 480-484; after 
the July Revolution, 498-506 ; under 
Louis Philippe, 535-537 ; under Napoleon 
III, 557-560, 567-577 ; and the Prussians, 
576-579 ; 1871 to 1898, 587-599. 

Francis II, Emperor, 441, 453. 

Francis V, Emperor, 607. 

Francis I of France, 325, 332-337. 

Francis II of France, 340. 

Francis I of Naples, 476. 

Francis II of Naples, 610, 611. 

Francis Joseph, Emperor, 554, 562, 572, 
601, 609, 616-622. 

Franciscan friars, 241, 329. 

Franconian dynasty, 227-231. 

Franco-Prussian War, 576-579. 

Frankfort, Diet of, 494, 595 ; treaty of, 579. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 408. 

Franks, 155, 160, 170, 178, 182, 187, 

Fredegonde, 190-191. 

Frederick I Barbarossa, Emperor, 175, 231. 

Frederick II, Emperor, 233, 239, 275. 

Frederick III, Emperor, 303, 308. 

Frederick II the Great, of Prussia, 395, 
396-398, 405-407, 585. 

Frederick III of Prussia, 395. 

Frederick I of Germany (Crown Prince), 
576, 583, 584, (Emperor) 604. 

Frederick VII of Denmark, 581, 662. 

Frederick, elector palatine, 354. 

Frederick the Wise of Saxony, 322, 333. 

Frederick, Prince„heir to Danish crown, 
662, 663. 

Frederick Charles of Prussia, Prince, 583. 

Frederick William I of Prussia, 395-896. 

Frederick William III of Prussia, 447, 448, 
451-452, 513. 

Frederick William IV of Prussia, 463, 555, 
566, 581. 

Fredrickshall, siege of, 891. 

Free companies, 26T. 



INDEX 



127 



Freemasonry, 470. 

Free trade iu England, 538. 

Freron, 426. 

Fresnel, 4S1. 

Freycinet, M. de, 591, 592, 595, 

Friedland, battle of, 443. 

Friedlingen, battle of, 382. 

Fries, 475. 

Froissart, 249. 267. 

Fronde, 358, 363-364. 

Frondsberg, George, 334. 

Fuad Pasha, 641, 642, 644. 

Fiieros, 672. 

Fulvia, 128. 

Fulton, Robert, 440. 

Fundamental Articles, 620. 

" Fundamental Statute," 607. 

Furies, the, 57. 

Gadsden Purchase, 700. 

Galba, 104. 

Galba, Roman emperor, 144. 

Galbus, 155. 

Galeazzo, Giovanni, 304. 

Galerius Ctesar, 159, 161. 

Galileo, 388. 

Galitzin, Princess, 467. 

Gallega, General, 674. 

Galliano, Commandant, 615. 

GaUic war, Cassar's, 122. 

Gallienus, 156. 

Gallus, 138. 

Galvani, 408. 

Gambetta, 577, 578, 589, 591, 592. 

Gans, 468. 

Garashanine, M., 653. 

Garfield, President, 708. 

Garibaldi, 564, 575, 610, 612. 

Gastein, convention of, 583. 

Gauls, capture Rome, 94 ; conquered by 
Caesar, 122. 

Gautama, 21-22. 

Gavril Pasha, 65T. 

Gay-Lussac, 481. 

Geary Act, 704. 

Geneva, 324. 

Genghis Khan, 11, 284. 

Geni us of Christianity, 466. 

Genoa, 277, 304, 411. 

Genseric, 180, 181, 182. 

Geoffroy, 481. 

George I of England, 391, 399-400. 

George II, 400. 

George III, 400. 

George I of Greece, 659. 

George of Greece, Prince, 647, 660. 

Gericault, 480. 

Germanicus, 138. 

Germanic Confederation, 457-460, 474-475. 

Germanj^ Romans in, 137-138; in the 
fourth century, 178-179 ; conquered by 
Charlemagne, 204-205 ; first demarca- 
tion of modern nation of, 211 ; bounda- 
ries in ninth century, 223 ; old Empire 
of, founded, 227 ; and the Papacy, 227- 
234; in the Crusades, 237-238; and 
house of Hapsburg, 280-281 ; dissolving 
of Empire, 281-282; under house of 



Austria, 303 ; Reformation in, 321-323 ; 

and Emperor Charles V, 332-337 ; in the 

Religious Wars, 353-354 ; at time of 

Napoleon I, 44 1-J43, 447-448, 450 ; after 

1830, 513; uniiication of, 585 ; modern 

Empire of, 586, 600-606. 
Geta, 153. 
Ghazni, 527. 

Ghent, revolt of, 336 ; confederation of, 346. 
GhibeUines, 232, 277. 
Ghiberti, 305. 
Gideon, 40. 
Giers, M. de, 635, 636. 
Gioberti, 541. 
Giotto, 279. 

Girondists, 420, 425, 426, 427. 
Gizeh, pyramids of, 25. 
Gladiators, 118. 
Gladstone, 682, 683, 684, 686, 687, 688, 689- 

690. 
Godefroy, 319. 

Godfrey of Bouillon, 236, 237. 
Godoy, 411, 444. 
Godwin, Earl, 258. 
Goethe, 421. 
Golden Age, 147-151. 
Golden Book, 277. 
Golden Bull, 281. 
Golden Fleece, 52. 
Goliath, 41. 

Goluchowski, Austrian premier in 1860,617. 
Goluchowski, Count, 622. 
Gomez, 512. 

Gondi, Paul de, 363, 364. 
Gonsalvo of Cordona, 312. 
Gontram, 190. 
"Good Queen," 36f2. 
Gordianus I, II, and III, 155. 
Gordon, General, 687. 
Gorgei, General, 561, 562. 
Gorres, 469, 475. 

Gortschakoflf, Prince, 627, 629, 632, 635. 
Goschen, Mr., 687. 
Gothic architecture, 225. 
Goths, 151, 155, 156, 172, 178, 180. 
Gottschalk, 224. 
Goujon, Jean, 320. 
Gourko, General, 630. 
Gracchi, 106, 107. 
Grahova, battle of, 652. 
Gramont, Duke de, 576. 
Granada, conquest of, 300. 
Grand Mogul, 12, 400, 401, 685. 
Granicus, battle of, 78. 
Gran son, battle of, 292. 
Grant, President, 707. 
Gravelines, battle of, 338. 
Gravelotte, battle of, 577. 
Great Britain, 223, 399, 678-690. 
Great Interregnum, 280. 
Great Ordinance of Reformation, 266. 
Great Redan, 569. 
Great Wall of China, 10. 
Greco-Turklsh War of 1897, 660. 
Greece, 51-74, 86-SS ; becomes a Roman 

province, 82 ; Goths and Heruli in, 156 ; 

Ottoman Turks conquer, 808 ; liberation 

of, 489 ; modern, 658-661. 



728 



INDEX 



Gregory the Great, Pope, 201. 

Gregory III, Pope, 202. 

Gregory VII, Pope, 229-230. 

Gregory X, Pope, 276. 

Gregory XIII, Pope, 331. 

Gregory of Nazianzen, Saint, 169. 

Grenoble, 501. 

Grevy, President, 592-594. 

Grey, Lady Jane, 320. 

Grochow, battle of, 516. 

Grotius, 386. 

Grouchy, Marshal, 454. 

Groudsinska, Countess, 624. 

Guadaloupe Hidalgo, treaty of, 700. 

Guarantee law, 613. 

Guastalla, battle of, 394. 

Guebriant, 357. 

Guelphs, 232, 234, 277. 

Gueux, the, 343, 345. 

Guicciardini, 319. 

Guido, 387. 

Guigiaut, 480. 

Guillaume de Lorris, 249. 

Guillaume de Sens, 250. 

Guises, the, 340, 341, 347. 

Guizot, 475, 480, 505, 523, 532, 535, 537, 

542, 639. 
Gundobad, 189. 
Gunpowder Plot, 365. 
Gustavus Adolphus, 356. 
Gustavus Vasa, 323. 
Gustavus III of Sweden, 407, 410, 422. 
Guttenberg, 318. 
Guyenne, Duke of, 291. 

Habeas corpus, bill of, 377. 

Hadrian, 148-150. 

Haidar Ali, 401. 

Hakim, CaUph, 689. 

Halifax Award, 707. 

Hamburg, 605. 

Hamilcar, 99. 

Hampden, John, 367, 368. 

Han dynasty. 10. 

Hannibal, 83.99-101, 104. 

Hanotaux, M., 599. 

Hanover, 397, 398, 439, 456, 457, 513, 583, 

584. 
Hanseatic League, 248, 280, 303, 605. 
Hapsburg, house of, 280. 
Hardenberg, 449, 459. 
Harold of England, 258. 
Haroun-al-Easchid, 197. 
Harpagus, 47, 48. 
Harrison, President, 704, 709, 712. 
Hartington, Lord, 687. 
Harvey, 388. 

Hasdrubal, son-in-law of Hamilcar, 99. 
Hastings, battle of, 258. 
Hastings, Warren, 518. 
Hatasu, 26. 
Hatti Humayoun, 640. 
Hatti Sherif of Ghul Khaneh, 638-639, 640. 
Haussmann, Baron, 573. 
Havelock, General, 682. 
Hawaii, 712. 

Hayes, President, 704, 707-708. 
Haynau, 607. 



Hebert, 426. 

Hebrews, 38-44. 

Hegira, 194. 

Heinsius, 382. 

Helena of Montenegro, wife of Prince of 

Naples, 653. 
Heliogabalus, 154. 
Helots, 60. 

Helvetian Republic, 439. 
Helvetii, 122. 
Hengist, 184. 
Henrietta of France, 361. 
Henry IV of Aragon, 800. 
Henry (Duke), Emperor, 227-228. 
Henry II, Emperor, 228. 
Henry V, Emperor, 252. 
Henry I of England, 259. 
Henry II of England (Henry Plantagenet), 

252, 260-261. 
Henry III of England, 254, 262. 
Henry IV of England, 270, 295. 
Henry V of England, 270, 295. 
Henry VI of England, 270, 295. 
Henry VII of England, 297-298, 311. 
Henry VIII of England, 325, 326, 333. 
Henry I of France, 251. 
Henry II of France, 335, 337, 340. 
Henry III of France, 345. 
Henry IV (Henry of Navarre), 345, 347, 

348, 351, 352. 
Henry V of France. See Chambord, 

Count of. 
Henry the Fowler, 217. 
Henry the Lion, 232. 
Henry VII of Luxemburg, 281. 
Henry the Proud, 231. 
Henry de Transtamara, 267. 
Henry II of Transtamara, 273. 
Henrys, War of the Three, 345. 
Heptarchy, Saxon, 215. 
Heraclius, 194, 196. 
Herat, 526, 527. 
Herculaneum, 146. 
Hercules, 52. 
Hericourt, battle of, 292. 
Heristal, Martin, 192. 
Heristal, Pepin, 192, 202. 
Hermann, 138. 

Hermann and Dorothea^ Goethe's, 421. 
Hermann-Saul, 204. 
Hermanric, 181. 
Herodotus, 69, 86. 
Herrings, battle of the, 271. 
HeruH, 156, 184, 185. 
Herzegovina, Austria-Hungary acquires, 

621, 632. 
Hescham I and II, 198. 
Hesse, 457, 513, 584. 
Hexham, battle of, 296. 
Ilia dynasty, 9. 
Hicks Pasha, General, 687. 
Hidalgos, 274. 
Hiero, 97. 

Ilildebrand, the monk, 228-229. 
Hiller, General, 583. 
Hincmar, 224. 
Hipparchus, 63, 64. 
Hippias, 64, 65. 



INDEX 



729 



Hippo, 181. 

Hippocrates, 69. 

Histiaeus, 49. 

Hitrovo, M., 656. 

Hobbes, 386. 

Hoche, General, 42S, 430. 

Hochstedt, battle of, 382. 

Hohenlinden, battle of, 436. 

Hohenstaufens, 231, 249. 

Holbein, 320. 

Holland, 345, 346; after Philip II, 350- 

351 ; and Louis XIV, 374 ; modern, 666- 

667. 
Holv Alliance, 458-459, 461-479, 485, 489. 
Holy Brotherhood, 299. 
Holy League of Pope Julius II, 313. 
Holy League in Spain, 301. 
Holv Office, 300, 301. 

Holy places, question of the, 568, 624, 639. 
Holy War, African, 506. 
Home Rule, 686, 687, 688. 
Homer, 86. 

Hondschoote, battle of, 428. 
Hong Kong, 530, 695. 
Honorius. 174, 180. 
Horace, 137. 
Horn, Count, 342. 
Horouk Barbarossa, 309. 
Horsa, 184. 
Horus, 29. 
Hosea, 33, 42. 
^oshea. King, 42. 
Tiospitallers, 237. 
Hotel de Ville burned, 588. 
Houchard, General, 428. 
HougassoflF, General Der, 629. 
Hovas, 593. 
Howe, General, 403. 
Hugh Capet, 212. 

Hugh the Great of Vermandois, 236. 
Hugo, Victor, 467, 480. 
Huguenots, 324, 344, 375, 376. 
Hugues de Payen, 237. 
Humbert of Italy, King, 614-615. 
Hundred Days, the, 454. 
Hundred Years' War, 251, 257, 264-272. 
Hungary, 217, 282, 335, 396, 553-554, 561- 

562, 617-622. 
Hunger Tower, 277. 
Hunkiar Iskelessi, treaty of, 522, 623. 
Huns, 172, 179-180, 182. 
Hunyadi, John, 282, 285, 308. 
Husiiisson, 484. 
Huss, John, 282. 
Hussite War, 281. 
Hutten, Ulric von, 319, 321. 
Huygens, 388. 
Hyksos dynasty, 25, 26. 
Hyrcanus, 117. 

Ibrahim Pasha, 490, 520, 521. 
Icaria, 534. 
Iceland, 662. 

Idistavisus, battle of, 138. 
Ignatieff, General, 629, 635, 644. 
Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, 148. 
12 Risorgimento, 533. 
Ihad, the, 53. 



Illyricum, 103. 

Imperial Diet. See Reichstag. 

Imperial Tribunal, 601. 

Income Tax, 538. 

Independents, English partv, 368, 869. 

India, 16-23 ; English in, 400-401, 697. 

India Company, Law's, 393. 

Indian mutiny, 681-682. 

Indulgences, 321. 

Infanzones, 274. 

Ingeborg of Denmark, 254. 

Inkerman, battle of, 569. 

Innocent II, Pope, 231. 

Innocent III, Pope, 232, 238, 244, 253, 254, 

261. 
Innocent IV, Pope, 233, 239. 
Inquisition, in France, 242 ; in Spain, 300, 

301, 343, (abolished) 472, 486; in Italy, 

329, 352, 463, 476. 
Institutes of Justinian, 186. 
Intendants, 362. 
Interim of Augsburg, 337. 
Investitures, quarrel of, 230. 
Ionian Islands, 456, 659, 699. 
lonians, 51. 

Ipsamboul, temples of, 26. 
Ireland, 369, 484, 494, 686, 687, 688. 
Irminsul, 204. 
Ironsides, Cromwell's, 368. 
Isaac, 38. 

Isaac Comnenus, 238. 
Isabella of Castile, 274, 300-301. 
Isabella II of Spain, 511, 512, 669. 
Isagoras, 64. 
Isaiah, 42. 

Isly, battle of, 536. 

Ismail Pasha, 642. 

Isocrates, 86. 

Israelites in Egypt, 27. 

Issus, battle of, 78. 

Istria, 103. 

Italia Irredenta, 615. 

Italy, conquest by Romans, 94-96 ; rebels 
against Rome, 110-111 ; barbarians in- 
•vade, 180-182, 184, 217; kingdom of, 
223; republics in, 276-277; principah- 
ties in, 304-306 ; feudal wars in, 310-313, 
332-338; and the Renaissance, 319-320; 
campaigns of Napoleon in, 430-431 ; rev- 
olutions of 1831, 515-516, of 1848, 554; 
in 1850, 607-608 ; unification of, 610-615. 

lurique, battle of, 245. 

Ivan III of Russia, 11, 389. 

Ivan IV the Terrible, 390. 

Ivry, battle of, 348. 

Jack Cade, 295. 

Jacob, 38. 

Jacobins, 423, 426. 

Jacquerie, 265, 266. 

Jacques Coeur, 271. 

Jagellon, 283. 

Jahii, 469, 475. 

Jamaica, insurrection in, 682. 

James 1 of England (VI of Scotland), 365- 

366. 
James II of England, 377-378, 380. 



730 



INDEX 



James IV of Scotland, 298, 313. 

Jane the Foolish, 304. 

Janissaries, 284 ; destruction of the, 491. 

Japan, 315, 518, 529, 695, 702-703. 

J assy, treaty of, 406. 

Jayme I the Conqueror, 245. 

Jean V of Armagnac, 292. 

Jeanne Hachette, 291. 

Jeffreys, Chief Justice, 378. 

Jellachich, 553, 554. 

Jemmapes, battle of, 424. 

Jena, battle of, 443. 

Jephthah, 40. 

Jeremiah, 42. 

Jerusalem, 34, 41, 43, 44, 144, 145, 236. 

Jesuits, 342, 354, 410, 466; order of, 

founded, 329 ; expelled from Russia, 

467, from Spain, -±72 ; in Switzerland, 

510, 537 ; in China, 529. 
Jesus Christ, 162. 
Jews, 38-44, 144-145, 148, 149. 
Joan of Arc, 271. 
Joanna I, queen of Naples, 278. 
Joannes Scotus Erigena, 224. 
Joegerndorf, battle of, 398. 
John of Austria, Archduke, 565. 
John of Austria, Don, 331, 343. 
John the Fearless, 268, 270, 284. 
John the Good, 265, 266. 
John (Lackland), king of England, 253, 

261-262. 
John II of Aragon, 274, 299. 
John I of Portugal, 275. 
John II of Portugal, 302. 
John VI of Portugal, 487. 
John XXII, Pope, 281. 
Johnson-Clarendon Convention, 684. 
Joinville, Prince de, 505, 547, 548. 
Joinville's Memoirs, 249. 
Jongleurs, 225. 
Jordan, Camille, 433. 
Joseph, 33. 

Joseph II, Emperor, 406, 410, 411. 
Josephus, 145. 
Joshua, 40. 

Josiah, king of Judah, 28. 3 

Joubert, General, 432. 
Jouffroy, Marquis de, 480, 481. 
Jourdan (General), 428, 430, 431, 432, 

(Marshal) 439. 
Jovian, 172. 
Juarez, 574. 
Juba, 125. 

Judaizing, crime of, 146, 300. 
Judith, Empress, 209. 
Jugurtha, 108, 109. 
Julia, wife of Marius, 108. 
Julian, 171. 
Julian law. 111. 
Julius II, Pope, 312, 319. 
July Revolution, 496. 
Jussieu, Bernard de, 481. 
Jussieu, Laurent de, 408. 
Justinian, 186. 
Justinian II, 202. 
Justinus, 150. 
Jutes, 178, 183. 
Juvenal, Chancellor, 271. 



Kaaba, temple of the, 193. 

Kainardji, treaty of, 406, 623. 

Kalisch, treaty of, 452. 

Kameruns, 698. 

Kant, 420. 

Kara George, 653. 

Karageorgevitch, Alexander, 653. 

Karnak, hall of, 30. 

Kars, 569, 629, 632, 685. 

Katkoff, 635. 

Kaulbars, General, 657. 

Kellerman, Marshal, 439. 

Kempen, battle of, 357. 

Kepler, 388. 

Khadjar dynasty, 526. 

Khaiber Pass, 527, 528. 

Khaireddin Barbarossa, 217, 336. 

Khaled, 196. 

Khanounname, the code, 335. 

Khartoum, 687. 

Khiva, 527. 

Khodynskoye plain, catastrophe of the, 

636. 
Khourshid Pasha, 641. 
Kierry-sur-Oise, edict of, 219, 
Kilidj Arslan, 236. 
King Arthur, 225. 
"King Bomba," 564. 
Kings of Rome, legendary, 89. 
Kiritii Pasha, 642. 
Kitchener, General, 693. 
Klapka, General, 562, 621. 
Knights of Christ, 242. 
Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, 240. 
Knights Templar, 237, 240, 256. 
Knights of the Teutonic Order, 241, 283. 
Knoop, Colonel, 634. 
Knox, John, 325. 
KoUin, battle of, 398. 
Komorn, battle of, 562. 
Konieh, battle of, 521. 
Koran, 194, 307. 
Korniloff, 569. 
Kossova, battle of, 652. 
Kossuth, 553, 561, 562, 701. 
Koszta, Martin, 702. 
Kotzebue, assassination of, 474. 
Krapotkine, Prince, 634. 
Krishna, 17. 

Krudener, Baron von, 630. 
Kriidener, Madame, 467. 
Kublai Khan, 11. 
Kunnersdorf, battle of, 398. 
Kutaieh, treaty of, 503 ; Convention of, 

522. 

La Bourdonnaye, 464. 

Labrienus, 123. 

La Bruydre, 385. 

Laconians, 60. 

Lactantius, 169. 

Ladislaus, king of Poland, 282, 285. 

Ladrone Islands, 675, 696. 

La Fayette, 403, 416, 422, 423, 499, 500. 

Laffitte, 500. 

Lafitte, 469. 

La Fontaine, 385. 

La^arde, General, 464. 



INDEX 



731 



Lagrange, 408. 

Lahire, 271. 

La Hogue, battle of, 380. 

Lahore, kingdom of, 528. 

Laibach, Congress of, 473, 475. 

Lake Kegillus, battle of, 90. 

Lake Thrasynienus, battle of, 99. 

Lake Vadimo, battle of, 96. 

La Marfee, battle of, 302. 

La Marmora, General, 612. 

Laniarque. General, 502. 

La Marsaille, battle of, 381. 

Lamartlne, 467, 480, 557. 

La Meilleraye, 356. 

Lammennais, 466. 

Lamoriciere, General de, 611. 

Lancaster, house of, 295-297. 

Land League, Irish, 686. 

Landriano, battle of, 335. 

Landtage, 619. 

Lanfranc, 224, 250. 

Lanjuinais, 438. 

Lannes, Marshal, 439. 

Laodicea, 136. 

La Perouse, 408. 

Laplace, 1, 408. 

Lara, the children of, 250. 

Lareveill^re-Lepeaux, 430. 

La Rochefoucauld, 385. 

La Eochelle, peace of, 345 ; siege of, 361. 

Las Navas de Tolosa. battle of, 245. 

Latour, 562. 

Laud, Archbishop, 367. 

La Vallette, 343. 

Lavigerie, Cardinal, 595. 

Lavoisier, 408, 426. 

Law, John, 393, 394. 

Lawrence, Sir Henry, 682. 

Lavard, Sir Austin, 630. 

League of the Neutrals, 403, 436. 

League of Public Welfare, 290. 

Lebanon, massacres in the, 639, 641. 

Lebas, 427. 

Lebrun, 386, 434. 

Lech, battle of the, 356. 

Lecomte, General, 587. 

Ledru-Eollin, 557. 

Lee, General, 705. 

Lefevre, Marshal, 439. 

Le Flo, General, 577. 

Leger, Saint, bishop of Autun, 192. 

Legion of Honor, Order of the, 437. 

Legislative Assembly, 423. 

Legists, 231, 248 ; Hungarian, 617. 

Legnano, battle of, 232. 

Leibnitz, 387, 388. 

Leipzig, battle of (1631), 356, (1813) 453. 

Lendo, Michael, 278. 

Lens, battle of, 357, 363. 

Leo the Iconoclast, 202. 

Leo X, Pope, 321, 332, 333. 

Leo XII, Pope, 476. 

Leo XIII, Pope (Cardinal Pecchi), 595, 

614, 67.5. 
Leonardo Bruni, 279. 
Leonardo da Vinci, 320. 
Leonidas, 66. 
Leopardi, 469. 



Leopold, Duke of Austria, 238. 

Leopold II, Archduke, 542, 607. 

Leopold I of Belgium, 665. 

Leopold II of Belgium, 665. 

Leopold of HohenzoUern, Prince, 576, 671. 

Lepanto, battle of, 331, 343. 

Lepidus, 118, 127, 128, 130. 

Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 521, 595, 596, 643. 

Lesueur, 3h6. 

Letourneur, 430. 

Leucopetra, battle of, 85. 

Leuctra, battle of, 73. 

Leudes, 179, 206. 

Le Vengeu/', 428. 

Leviathan, Hobbes', 386. 

Lewes, battle of, 262. 

L'Hopital, 341. 

Liberals in France, 482-483. 

Liberal-Unionists, 6S7, 688. 

Library, at Alexandria, 43 ; at Athens, 156 ; 

French Royal, 267 ; of the Louvre, 

burned, 588 ; Ulpian, 148 ; Vatican, 279, 

.331. 
Libuin, Saint, 204. 
Liciniau law, 107. 
Licinius, 161. 
Licinius Stolo, 93. . 
Liege, rebellion of.' 291. 
Liegnitz, battle of, 398. 
Ligny, battle of, 454. 
Liliuokalani, Queen, 712. 
Lille, siege of, and surrender, 382. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 635, 704, 705. 
Linnaeus, 408. 
Lissa, 584. 612. 
Lobanoff, Prince, 636. 
Local Government Bill, Irish, 688. 
Locke, John, 328, 3S6-387, 413. 
Lodi, battle of, 431. 
Loegrians, 183. 
Lollard, 269. 
Lombard League, 232. 
Lombards, 178, 201, 202, 209. 
Lombardy, 278, 279, 4.31, 609. 
Lome, Dupuy de, 675, 714, 715. 
Lonato, battle of, 431. 
London, treaty of (1827), 489, 490, (1840) 

523 ; conference of, 666. 
Long Parliament, 367-369. 
Longinus. 157. 

Lord Protector, Cromwell as, 369-370. 
Loria, Admiral Roger de, 276. 
Lorraine, 292, 421, 579, 601. 
Lothaire, son of the Debonair, 209-210. 
Lothaire II of Germany, 231. 
Lotharingia, 211. 
Louis the Child, 227. 
Louis the Debonair, 209-210. 
Louis the German, 211. 
Louis I the Pious, of France, 205, 209 
Louis II the Stammerer, 211. 
Louis III, 212. 
Louis IV d'Outremer, 212. 
Louis VI the Fat, 252. 259. 
Louis VII, 237, 252, 260. 
Louis VIII, 254. 
Louis IX (Saint Louis), 239-240, 254-255, 



732 



INDEX 



Louis X the Quarrelsome, 257. 

Louis XI, 290-293, 304. 

Louis Xn, 311-313. 

Louis XIII, 360-362. 

Louis XIV, 251, 294, 362-364, 372-376, 380- 

384. 
Louis XV, 393-394, 412. 
Louis XVI, 412, 414-425. 
Louis XVIII, 433, 453-454, 462, 464-165, 

475, 477, 478. 
Louis I of Bavaria, 555. 
Louis IV of Bavaria, 277, 281. 
Louis Napoleon. See Napoleon III. 
Louis Philippe (Duke of Orleans), king of 

France, 499-506. 528, 537, 549. 
Louvel, 471, 475. 
Louvois, 373. 
Lowositz, battle of, 398. 
Loyola, Ignatius, 330. 
Lubeck, peace of, 355. 
Lucan, 142. 
Lucknow, 682. 
Lucullus, 116. 
Luitprand, 202. 
Luiz of Portugal, 676. 
Lulli, 386. 

Luneville, peace of, 436. 
Lusiad, the, 814. 
Luther, 269, 289, 819, 321-322. 
Lutter, battle of, 355. 
Lutzen, battle of (1682), 356, (1813) 453. 
Luxemburg, 505, 575, 665, 666. 
Luxor, obelisks of, 27. 
Luynes, Duke de, 360. 
Luzzara, battle of, 382. 
Lyons, insurrection at (1831), 501, (1834) 

503. 
Lycurgus, 60-61. 
Lydia, 141. 
Lysander, 72. 
Lysias, 69, 86. 

Maccabees, family of, 43. 

Macdonald, General, 432. 

Macedon, 75, 79-80, 83, 104. 

Macedonia, 180, 658, 661. 

Macellus, 464. 

Machares, 117. 

Machiavelli, 319. 

Mack, General, 440. 

McKinley, President, 675, 712, 714, 715. 

MacMahon (Marshal), 571, 576, 577, 587, 

(President) 589-591. 
Macrinus, 158-154. 
Mad War, 294. 
Madagascar, 593, 696. 
Madrid, treaty of, 334. 
Maecenas, 137. 
Maestricht, treaty of, 346. 
Magellan, 816. 
Magenta, battle of, 571, 609. 
Magna Charta, 261, 262, 263. 
Magnano, battle of, 432. 
Magnentius, 170. 
Magnesia, battle of, 82, 103. 
Mahabharata, the, 17. 
Mahdi, 686, 687. 
Mahmoud the Gaznevid, 18. 



Mahmoud Nedim Pasha, 644, 655. 

Mahmoud, Sultan, 491, 520, 522, 638, 653. 

Ifaine, blowing up of the, 675, 715. 

Maintenon, Madame de, 375. 

Maitre Jean, 250. 

Major Arts, 277, 278. 

Majorian, 174. 

Ma'kalle, 615. 

Malacca, 525. 

Malakoff, 569. 

Malek Kamel, 239. 

Malek Shah, 235. 

Malesherbes, 424, 426. 

Malleville, de, 485. 

Malplaquet, battle of, 382. 

Mamelukes, and Selim I, 809 ; and Napo- 
leon, 432 ; massacre of, 520. 

Mamelukes, Swiss political party, 324. 

Manas, 20. 

Mandana, mother of Cyrus, 47. 

Manfred, 275, 276. 

Manila, 675, 715, 716. 

Manin, Daniel, 554, 564. 

Manlius, 120. 

Mansart, 386. 

Mansfeld, Count von, 355. 

Mantchu Tartars, 12. 

Manteuflfel, Marshal, 602. 

Mantineia, battle of, 74. 

Manu, book of the laws of, 19. 

Manuel, 469. 

Manuel the Fortunate, 302. 

Manutius, Aldus, 318. 

Manzoni, 469. 

Marat. 423, 425, 426. 

Marathon, battle of, 65. 

Marbod, the Mai'coman, 137, 138. 

Marcel, ifetienne, 266. 

Marcere, M., 591. 

Marchfeld, the, 280. 

Marcilio Ficino, 279. 

Marcomanni, 150, 151. 

Marco Polo, 11. 

Marcus Aurelius, 150-151. 

Mardonius, 65. 

Marengo, battle of, 486. 

Margaret of Anjou, 271, 295. 

Margaret the Great of Denmark, 283. 

Maria, Dona, queen of Portugal, 487, 488, 
493, 503, 512. 

Maria Christina, 511, 512, 513. 

Maria da Gloria II, Dona, 675-676. 

Maria de las Mercedes, 673. 

Maria Louisa, daughter of Ferdinand VII 
of Spain, 669. 

Maria Louisa, wife of Napoleon I, 444, 458. 

Maria Pia, 676. 

Maria Theresa, Empress, 396-398. 

Maria Theresa, Infanta, 364. 

Marie Antoinette, Queen, 426. 

Marie Dagmar, Princess, 663. 

Marignano, battle of, 332. 

Marillac, Marshal de, 362. 

Maritime Inscription, 373. 

Marius, 107-112. 

Marlborough, Duke of, 382, 899. 

Maronites, 639. 

Marot, 319. 



INDEX 



733 



Marquesas Islands, 535. 

Marston Moor, battle of, 368. 

Martignac, M. de., 483, 492, 496. 

Martigues, Gerard de, 237. 

Martin of Troyes, 249. 

Martin V, Pope, 275. 

Mary of Burgundy, 293, 303. 

Mary of England, Queen, 326. 

Mary Stuart, 343, 344, 347. 

Masaccio, 279. 

Masscna (General), 432, (Marshal) 439, 440. 

Massinissa, 101. 

Matilda, Countess, 280. 

Matilda, Empress, 259, 260. 

Matta, Sefior, 709. 

Matveef, 634. 

Maupas, De, 560. 

Mavrocordatos, 658. 

Maxentius, 161. 

Maximianus, 159, 160, 161. 

Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, 354. 

Maximilian, Emperor, 293, 303-304, 311, 
332. 

Maximilian (Archduke), Emperor of Mex- 
ico, 574. 

Maxlminus, 154-155. 

May Laws, 602, 603. 

Mayence, Diet of, 232. 

Mayors of the palace, 191, 192. 

Mayotte, 536. 

Mazarin, Cardinal, 358, 362-364. 

Mazdeism, 45-47. 

Mazeppa, 391. 

Mazzini, 516, 564, 610. 

Mecca, 193, 195 ; captured by the Waha- 
bites, 520. 

Medes, 47-48, 50. 

Medici, the, 278, 805, 337. 

Medici, Catherine de, 340, 341, 344, 360, 
361, 362. 

Medici, Cosmo de, 278, 305, 317. 

Medici, Guiliano de, 305. 

Medici, Lorenzo de, 305. 

Medici, Pietro de, 810. 

Medina, 194, 520. 

Ifeditations of Marcus Aurelius, 150. 

Meditations, Lamartine's, 467. 

Mehemet Ali Pasha, 680, 632, 646. 

Mehmet Ali, 508, 520-523. 

Meistersingers, 250. 

Melancthon, PhiUp, 327. 

Melikolf, General Louis, 629, 635. 

Meline, M., 598. 

Melloria, battle of, 233, 277. 

Menahem, 33. 

Mendicant friars, 241. 

Menelaus, 53, 56. 

Menelek, 615. 

Meneptah, 27. 

Menes. 24. 

Mentana, battle of, 612. 

Mentchikoff, Prince, 624, 625. 

Mentshikoff, General, 569. 

Mercia, 184. 

Merinides, 273. 

Merlin, 426. 

Merovig, 188. 

Merovingians, 187-192. 



Merseburg, battle of, 21T, 228. 

Mesnaderos, 274. 

Messalina, 141. 

Messenian wars, 62. 

Messina, founded, 62 ; and Garibaldi, 610. 

Metaurus, battle of the, 100. 

Metellus, 99, 105. 

Method, Descartes', 386. 

Methodists, 467. 

Meton, 69. 

Metternich, Prince, 473, 477, 488, 514, 582, 

540, 552, 555. 
Metulum, siege of, 131. 
Metz, 387, 578. 
Mexican War, 700. 
Mexico, 486, 574. 
Mezentseff, 634. 
Miaoulis, 489. 
Micah, 42. 

Michael Angelo, 279, 319, 320. 
Michelet, 480. 
Micipsa, 108. 
Mickievitch, 637. 
Middle Ages, 177-287. 
Middle Kingdom. See China. 
Midhat Pasha, 629, 644-647, 655. 
Mignet, 480. 
Miguel, Dora, 487, 489, 493, 494, 501, 503, 

512, 675. 
Milan, 228, 278, 279, 304, 311, 312, 318, 838, 

848, 382, 458, 468, 548, 554, 614. 
Milan of Servia, King, 658-654. 
Milan, King Alexander, 654. 
Milazzo, battle of, 610. 
Militarism in German Empire, 606. 
Mill, John Stuart, 688. 
Millesimo, battle of, 431. 
Miltiades, 49, 64, 65. 
Milton, 886. 
Minden, battle of, 398. 
Ming dynasty, 11, 12. 
Minnesingers, 250. 
Minor Arts, 277, 278, 305, 
Minto, Lord, 541. 
Minutius Felix, 153. 
Mirabeau, 328, 418, 419. 
Mirko, 652. 

Misenum, treaty of, 130. 
Misolonghi, 490. 
3Rsopogon, Julian's, 171. 
Missi dominici, 206. 
Mithridates, 110, 115-117. 
Mitylene, revolt of, 70. 
Moaviah, 196. 
Modena. 458, 542, 607, 610. 
Moeris, Lake, 25, 31. 
Mohacz, battle of, 335. 
Mohammed, 198-195. 
Mohammed II, 285, 307-308. 
Mohammed Achmet. See Mahdi. 
Molay, Jacques, 256. 
Moldavia, 309, 649, 650. 
Mole of Hadrian, 149. 
Mole, M., 504-506. 
Molifere, 385. 

Moltke, Count von, 576, 583, 585. 
Molwitz, battle of, 896. 
Moncey, Marshal, 439. 



734 



INDEX 



Mondovi, battle of, 431. 

Mongols, 10-12, 217, 283, 284. 

Monk, General, 370. 

Monmouth, Duke of. 378. 

^fonologiuon, the, 224. 

Monroe doctrine, 544, 692, 711. 

Mons-en-Puelle, battle of, 257. 

Mons Sacer, 91. 

Montaigne, 319. 

Montebello, battle of, 571, 609. 

Montenegro, 652-653. 

Montenotte, battle of, 431. 

Montereau, 453. 

Montesquieu, 409. 

Montfort, Simon de, Earl of Leicester, 242, 

262. 
Montmirail, battle of, 453. 
•Montmorency, Duke de, 361, 362. 
Montojo, Admiral, 715. 
Montpellier, treaty of. 361. 
Montpensier, Duke of, 537, 549. 
Montrose. 369. 
Moors, 178, 196 ; invade Spain , 244-245 ; 

power of, reduced, 273, 274, 279, 300; 

expelled, 343. 
Morat, battle of, 292. 
Moravian Brethren, 467. 
Morea, the, 490, 520. 
Moreau, General, 430, 431, 436, 438. ' 
Morgarten, battle of, 281. 
Morny, De, brother of Louis Napoleon, 

560. 
Moro, Ludovico il, 304, 311. 
Morocco founded, 244. 
Mortier, Marshal, 439, 504. 
Moscow, Napoleon at, 451. 
Moscow Gazette, 635. 
Moses, 38, 39, 40. 
Moskva, battle of the, 451. 
Mouktar Pasha, 629. 
Mount Ohud, battle of, 194. 
Mount Tabor, battle of, 432, 
Mountain, party of the, 425, 426, 
Mourad I, Sultan, 285. 
Mourad II, Sultan, 285. 
Mourad V, Sultan, 629, 645. 
Muhlberg, battle of, 323, 337. 
Miiller, von, 420. 
Mummius, 85, 104. 
Munda, battle of, 125. 
Murat, Marshal, 439, 442. 
Muret, battle of, 242. 
Murillo, 387. 
Musset, 480. 
Muthul, 108. 
Mylitta, 35. 
Mythology, German, 179. 

Naefels, battle of, 281. 

Nantes, Edict of, 348, 351, 353, 361 ; re- 
voked, 375. 

Napier, Sir Charles, 569, 680, 

Naples, 275-276, 306, 310, 311-312, 332, 
338, 341, 382, 463, 472, 542, 563, 610. 

Naples, Prince of, 653. 

Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte), at Tou- 
lon, 426, 428 ; in Paris, 429 ; campaigns 
in Italy, 430-431 ; First Consul, 434-438 ; 



Emperor, 438-453 ; the Hundred Days, 
453 ; Waterloo, 454 ; death, 475. 

Napoleon II, 445. 

Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon), 439, 482; 
in ItaUan insurrection of 1831. 515 ; 
President, 558-560 ; Emperor, 567-577 ; 
and Cavour, 609 ; and Francis Joseph, 
609 ; and Confederate States of America, 
706, 

Napoleon IV (Prince Imperial), 592, 

Napoleon, Charles, 515. 

Napoleon, Prince, 571, 593. 

Narboune, 150. 

Narses, 158. 160. 

Narva, battle of, 390. 

Narvacz, 513, 532, 669, 670. 

Naseby, battle of, 369. 

Natal, Dutch Republic of, 693. 

Natalie, Queen, 654. 

National Assembly, French, (1789) 414- 
419, 446, (1848) 557-560, (1871) 579, 587, 
(1875) 590 ; German, 565 ; Prussian, 566 ; 
in Turkey, 646. 

National Council, Swiss, 664. 

National Guard, Order of the, 549. 

National Irish Land League, 686. 

Naulochus, battle of, 130. 

Navarino, 491, 521. 

Navarre, 223, 255, 273, 274, 299, 301, 333, 
841. 

Navigation Act, 369 ; repealed, 538, 679. 

Nearchus, 80. 

Nebuchadnezzar, 34, 42. 

Necho, 28. 

Necker, 412, 415. 

Neerwinden, battle of, 381. 

Nehemiah, 43. 

Nelson, 436, 440. 

Nemours, Duke de, 509. 

Nero, 141-143. 

Nerva, 147. 

Netherlands, 210, 247, 666-667 ; the Refor- 
mation in, 324, 326 ; under Philip II, 
339, 342-343, 345-346; and Louis XIV, 
881, 382, 383 ; kingdom of, 456-457, 508- 
510. See Holland. 

Neuburg, Duke of, 354. 

Neustria, 190, 212. 

Neutrals, League of the, 436. 

Nevil Cross, battle of, 265. 

Newbury, battle of, 368. 

New Caledonia, 535. 

I^ew Christianity, Saint Simon's, 482. 

Newfoundland, 383 ; fisheries question, 
707. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 388. 

New Zealand, 535, 696. 

Nev, Marshal, 439, 464. 

Nezib, battle of, 522. 

NilielungenUed, 250, 

Nica?a, Council of, 164 ; besieged by Cru- 
saders, 236. 

Nicaragua ship canal, 701. 

Nicholas, Grand Duke, 630, 631. 

Nicholas I, Tsar, 495, 498, 526, 532, 570, 
623-625. 

Nicholas II, Tsar, 636-637. 

Nicholas I of Montenegro, Prince, 652-653, 



INDEX 



735 



Nicholas II, Pope, 229. 
Nicholas III, Pope, 276. 
Nicholas V, Pope, 279. 

Nicias, 71. 

Nicopolis, battle of (1396), 285, (1877) 630. 
Nij,'htingale, Florence, 680. 
Nihilists, 633-685. 
Nimeguen, treaty of, 3T4. 
Nimes, 149. 
Nineveh, 32, 33, 34, 47. 
Nitocris, queen of Egypt, 25. 
Nogaret, Guillaume de, 256. 
Non-Conformists, 350, 365. 
Non-intervention, principle of, 485; vio- 
lated, 517. 
Nordlingen, battle of, 356, 357. 
Normandy, 223, 253, 254, 259-201, 290. 
Normans, 258, 259, 260. 
Northampton, battle of, 296. 
North German Confederation, 585. 
Northmen, 178, 214, 216. 
Northumberland, 184. 
Northwestern boundary question, 706. 
Norway, 215, 224, 2S2, 458, 663. 
Notables, Assembly of, 412. 
Notre Dame, plot of, 502. 
Noureddin, 237. 
Novara, battle of, 564, 608. 
Novellas, of Justinian, 186. 
Novi, battle of, 432. 
Noyon, 223 ; treaty of, 332. 
Numantia, 104, 105. 
Numerianus, 158. 
Numidia, conquest of, 107, 108. 
Nystadt, treaty of, 391. 

Gates, Titus, 377. 

Oath of Strasburg, 210. 

Obrenovitch, Milosch, 653. 

Oceania, 695-697. 

a'Connell, 494. 

Octavius Cjesar, 127-138. 

Odenath, 156. 

Odessa, 569. 

Odoacer, 174, 182. 

O'Donnell, Marshal, 670. 

Odysseus, 489. 

Odyssey, 53. 

CEdipus, 62. 

Oersted, 481. 

Oken, 475. 

Olaf, king of Norway, 215. 

Oldenburg, 513. 

Old Sarum, 485. 

Olga of Greece, Queen, 659. 

OUivier, 576. 

Olney, Richard, 711. 

Olympian Games, 54. 

Omar, 195. 

Omar Pasha, 640, 642, 644, 651, 652. 

Ommiades, 196. 

On, city of, 38. 

On Christian Liberty , 322. 

Opimius, 107. 

Opium War, 12, 518, 529-530, 694-695 

Orange Free State, 693. 

Orchomenus, battle of, 116. 

Orkhan, 284. 



Orleans, besieged by Alarlc, 182; by the 

English, 271. 
Orleans, Duchess of (1848), 549. 
Orleans, Duke of, regent of France, 898- 

394. 
Orleans, Duke of, Girondist leader, 426. 
Orleans, Duke of, son of Count of Paris, 

593. 
Ormazd, 45, 46. 

Oscar I of Sweden and Norway, 663. 
Oscar II, 663. 
Osiris, 29. 

Osman Pasha, 680, 651. 
Osnabruck, battle of, 205. 
Ostend Manifesto, 702. 
Ostracism, 64. 
Ostrogoths, 180, 18.1-185. 
Ostrolenka, battle of, 516. 
Othman, successor of Mohammed, 195. 
Othman, a chief of the Ottoman Turks, 

284. 
Othniel. 40. 
Otho, 144. 

Otho of Greece, King, 658, 659. 
Otto of Brunswick, 232. 
Otto the Great, Emperor, 217, 228. 
Otto II, Emperor, 228. 
Otto III, Emperor, 228. 
Ottocar II, 280. 
Ottoman Empire, formation of, 285, 307- 

309 ; and Crimean War, 568 ; 1839 to 

1898, 638-648. 
Ottoman Turks, 11, 12, 217, 282, 306, 309 ; 

conquest of Constantinople by, 284-285 ; 

under Souleiman, 335-;336 ; Spain and 

the, 34:3 ; defeated by Prince Eugene, 

393 ; and Russia, 405. 
Oudenarde, battle of, 882. 
Oudinot, General, 564. 
Ouzoun Hassan, 308. 
Oxenstiern, 356. 
Oxford Movement, 467. 
Oxford, statutes of, 254, 262, 263. 
Ovid, 138. 
Owen, Robert, 482. 

Pacta Conventa, 283. 

Paderborn, 204. 

Padilla, Don Juan de, 801. 

Padua, 278, 542. 

Paladines, General Aurelle de, 578. 

Palermo, 463. 

Palestrina, 320. 

Palikao, battle of, 12. 

Palikao, Count, 577. 

Palmerston, Lord, 523, 641, 678, 679, 681, 

682, 683, 688. 
Palmvra, 42, 156. 
Pamir difficulty, 036. 
Pamphilus, 80. 

Panama scandal, 595, 596, 597. 
Pandects, 186. 
Pannoni, 137. 
Panormus, battle of. 99. 
Papacv, 201-202 ; and German Empire, 

228-234; and the Crusades. 285, 238; 

and Philip IV of France, 255-256 ; at 

Avignon, 256 ; in sixteenth century, 306, 



736 



INDEX 



321 ; and the Eeformation, 322, 329-331 ; 
and English monarchy, 325, 341, 344; 
and Napoleon I, 437, 438 ; and modern 
Italy, 554, 611-614. See Church. 

Paphos, 136. 

Papin, 388. 

Papirius Cursor, 95. 

Papua, 696. 

Paramatma, 19, 20. 

Paris, Congress of, 570 ; Council of, 191 ; 
treaty of (1763), 398, (1814) 454, (1815) 
455, (1856) 650, 627, 628 ; siege of, 578 ; 
University of, 248, 249, 290, 475. 

Paris, Count of, son of Duke of Orleans, 
505 549 593 

Parliament, British, 262, 367-369, 485; 
Bulgarian, 656; Danish, 662; first na- 
tional Italian, 611 ; in the Netherlands, 
667; Ottoman, 646, 648; Servian, 674; 
Spanish, 672 ; in Sweden and Norway, 
663. See Assembly, Boule, National 
Assembly, Keichstag. 

Parma, 394, 607, 609. 

Parma, Duke of, 346, 348. 

Parmenio, 79. 

Parrhasius, 69. 

Parthenon, 69. 

Parthenopeian Kepublic, 432. 

Parthian s, 123. 

Pascal, 364, 385, 388. 

Paskevitch, Marshal, 516. 

Patay, battle of, 271. 

Patricians, 90-92. 

Paul I, Tsar, 432, 436. 

Paul II, Pope, 308. 

Paul III, Pope, 329. 

Paul IV, Pope, 329, 330, 338. 

Paulus, minister of Alexander Severus, 154. 

Paulus ^milius, 104. 

Pausanias, assassin, 77. 

Pausanias, king of Sparta, 66, 67. 

Pavia, 223, 278 ; battle of, 334. 

Pavia, General, 671. 

Parnell, 686. 

Pazzi, conspiracy of the, 306. 

Pecci, Cardinal. See Leo XIII. 

Pecheros, 274. 

Pecquigny, treaty of, 292, 297. 

Pedro I of Brazil (Dom Pedro), 487, 511, 
675. 

Pedro V of Portugal, 676. 

Pedro the Cruel, 267, 273. 

Peel, Eobert, 484. 

Peel, Sir Robert, 538. 

Pelasgi, 51. 

Pelayo, 243. 

Pelissier, General, 569. 

Pellico, Silvio, 469, 476. 

Pelopidas, 73. 

Peloponnesian wars, 70-74. 

Pelops, 52. 

Pendleton, Senator, 708. 

Penn, William, 691. 

Pepe, General, 515. 

Pepe, Italian revolutionist, 554. 

Pepin the Short, 203. 

Perennis, 151. 

Pericles, 68, 



P^rignon, Marshal, 439. 

Peronne, interview of, 291. 

Perpenna, 114. 

Perrault, 386. 

Perry, Commodore, 703. 

Persano, Admiral, 612. 

Perseus, 104. 

Persia, 48, 78-79, 681, 694. 

Pertinax, 152. 

Peru, 486. 

Perusia, battle of, 95. 

Perusian War, 130. 

Pescennius Niger, 152. 

Pesth, 553, 561. 

Peter the Great, 390-392, 628. 

Peter III Tsar, 898. 

Peter the Hermit, 235, 236. 

Peter III of Aragon, 276. 

Peter II of Montenegro, 652. 

Peter's Pence, 215, 258. 

Peterwardein, battle of, 396. 

Petition of Eight, 367. 

Petrarch, 279. 

Phalansteries, 534. 

Phalanx, Philip organizes the, 75. 

Pharamond, 187. 

Pharaohs, the, 26-28. 

Pharnaces, 117. 

Pharsalia, battle of, 124. 

Phidias, 69. 

Philadelphia, 403, 707. 

Philadelphus, 83. 

Philip, Eoman emperor, 155. 

Philip the Good of Burgundy, 270. 

Philip of Flanders, Prince, 651. 

Philip II Augustus, of France, 238, 253, 

261. 
Philip III the Bold, of France, 255, 266. 
Phihp IV the Fair, of France, 255, 264, 265. 
Philip V of France, 257. 
Phihp IV the Fair, of Germany, 304. 
Philip of Macedon, 75-77. 
Philip II of Spain, 326, 337, 339-349. 
Phihp V of Spain, 881, 382. 
Philip of Suabia, 232. 
Philippi, battle of, 129. 
Philippines, 839, 674, 675, 716. 
Philopator, 33. 
Philopoemen, 85, 103. 
Philotas, 79. 
Phocion, 84. 
Phoenicians, 36-37. 
Phraortes, 47. 
Piast, Duke, 283. 
Picard, 388. 

Pichegru, battle of, 428, 433, 438. 
Picts, 148, 183. 

Piedmont, 427, 458, 569, 570, 571, 607-610. 
Pierce, President, 702. 
Pieton, 422. 

Pierre de Bonneuil, 250. 
Pierre de Castelnau, 242. 
Pierre de Fontaine, 221. 
Pierre des Vignes, 233. 
Pietists, 467. 

Pietro II of Florence, 305. 
Pietrovski, 634. 
Pilnitz, declaration of, 421, 



mDEX 



737 



Pilon, Germain, 320. 

Pindar, 86. 

Pisa, 277, 279 ; council of, 313. 

Pisistratus, 63. 

Pithon, 38. 

Pitt, William, Lord Chatham, 399. 

Pitt, William, son of Lord Chatham, 432, 

436, 439, 443. 
Pius II, Pope, 304, 308. 
Pius V, Pope, 329, 331, 342. 
Pius VII, Pope, 4:38, 466, 476. 
Pius IX, Pope, 330, 537, 541, 542, 5G4-565, 

602, 607, 611, 612-614. 
Plague of Florence, 277. 
Plasian, Guillaume de, 256. 
Plataea, battle of, 66. 
Plato, 59, 69, 81. 
Plautia-Papirian law, 111. 
Plebeians, 90-92. 
Plebiscite. 567. 
Plevna, siege of, 630, 651. 
PlimsoU Act, 689. 
Pliny, 146. 

Plombieres, interview of, 609. 
Plotina, 147. 
Pobiedonostseff, 635. 
Poisson, 481. 
Poitiers, battle of, 265. 
Poland, 223, 224, 389, 390; dominant 

power of eastern Europe, 288 ; partition 

of, 405-407 ; revolutionary feeUng in, 469 ; 

revolution of 1830, 516 ; divided up into 

Russian provinces, 517. 
Pole, Cardinal, 411. 
Polignac, M. de, 485, 496. 
Poltava, battle of, 391. 
Polycarp, 163. 
Polytheism, Greek, 57. 
Pombal, 410. 

Pompadour, Madame, 398. 
Pompeii, 146. 

Pompey, 117, 121, 124, 128. 
Poniatowski, 405. 
Pontius Herennius, 95. 
Pontus Telesinus, 112. 
Poor Law, 508. 
Popish Plot, 377. 
Poppaea, 142. 
Porcaro, Stephen, 278. 
Portalis, 433, 435. 
Porto Rico, 486, 675. 
Portugal, 275, 301-302, 314-315, 487, 488, 

493, 494, 512, 675-677. 
Portuguese America, 544. 
Poussin, 386. 
Pragmatic Sanction, 281 ; of Bourges, 

.332. 
Prague, battle of, 398. 
Praxiteles, 80. 
Prearaeneu, Rigot de, 435. 
Presburg, treaty of, 440. 
Pretender. See Stuart, Charles. 
Pressburg, 553. 
Prim, Marshal, 670, 671. 
Primitive Legislation, De Bonald's, 466. 
Principalities, Italian, 304-306. 
Printing, invention of, 318. 
Priscus, Helvidius, 145. 

3b 



Pritchard, 536. 

Probus, 157-158, 187. 

Procida, 276. 

Propertius, 138. 

Protectorate. See Cromwell. 

Protestantism, in England, 325, 326, 344, 
365, 370-871 ; in France, 825, 361 ; in 
Germany, 326, 358 ; in the Netherlands, 
324, 342, 345 ; in Scotland, 825 ; in Swit- 
zerland. 324, 664. See Reformation. 

Provenfal language, 225. 

Provincial Committees, 602. 

Provincial Estates of lower Austria, 552. 

Prusias, king of Bithynia, 103. 

Prussia, 217, 241, 382 ; creation of, 898- 
398 ; and PoUsh partitions, 406-407 ; and 
Napoleon I, 421, 424, 427, 428, 440, 443, 
447-450, 4.52, 454; after Napoleon, 464, 
478 ; revolutionary agitation of 1848, 555 ; 
and Austria, 580-584 ; war with France, 
576-57ft; hegemony of, 584-585 ; position 
in German Empire, 600, 601. 

Psammeticus, 28. 

Ptolemies, the, 28. 

Ptolemy Soter, 83. 

Publilius Philo, 95. 

Puchner, General, 561. 

Puffendorf, 386. 

Pugt, 386. 

Pulcheria, 185. 

Punic wars, 98-102. 

Punjaub, 527, 528. 

Pupienus, 155. 

Puritans, 868, 378. 

Pydna, battle of, 84. 

Pyramids, battle of the, 432. 

Pyrenees, treaty of the, 364. 

Pyrrhus, 96, 97. 

Pythagoras, table of, 85. 



609; Turkish, 



Quadi, the, 151, 178. 
Quadrilateral, Italian, 543, 

630 ; eastern, 681. 
Quadruple Alliance, 508. 
Quebec, 351, 898. 
Queen of Sheba, 42. 
Quesnay, 409. 



Rabelais, 319. 

Racine, 385. 

Radagaisus, 180. 

Radetzki, Marshal, 542, 543, 554, 563, 

564, 607. 
Rsemer, 388, 
Raglan, Lord, 5G9. 
Railway, first French, 481. 
Ralli, M., 660. 
Ramatana, 17. 
Ramazan, fast of, 195. 
Ramel, General, 464. 
Rameses, city of, 38. 
Rameses II, 26. 
Ramesseum of Thebes, 26. 
Ramillies, battle of, 382. 
Raoul, Duke of Burgundy, 212. 
Raphael, 319, 320. 
Rastadt, treaty of, 383. 
Ratazzi, Sign or, 611. 



738 



INDEX 



Ratisbon, Diet of, 355. 

Eavaillac, 352. 

Eaymond, Count of Toulouse, 236. 

Kechiarius, 183. 

Eechila, 183. 

Eecollets, the, 241. 

Reconstruction of Southern States, 706. 

Eed Cross Society, 680. 

Eedcliffe, Lord Stratford de, 625. 

Eedif Pasha, 630. 

Reed, W. B., 703. 

Reform Bill, English, 500, 507-508 ; Sec- 
ond, 683, 684; Third, 68"}. 

Eeformation, the, 304, 321-328. 

Eehoboam, 42. 

Eeichsrath, 619, 620. 

Eeichstadt, Duke of (Napoleon IV), 445. 

Eeichstag, 585, 586, 600. 

Eeinstein, Captain, 634. 

Eeligious wars, 339-359. 

Eembrandt, 387. / 

Eemi, Saint, 188. 

Eenaissance, 289, 318-320. 

Republic, French, proclaimed, 424 ; second 
French, 557-560 ; third French, 5S7-599 ; 
Helvetian, 439 ; Italian, 439 ; of Novgo- 
rod, 389 ; Parthenopeian, 432 ; Eoman, 
90 ; of Saint Mark, 5&4; Swiss, 281, 439, 
663-665 ; of Zaperoguian Cossacks, 406. 
See United States. 

Eepublics, Italian city-, 276-277 ; replaced 
by principalities, 304-306. 

Eestoration, of Charles II of England, 370 ; 
of Bourbons, 453. 

Revolution, American, 403 ; Belgian, 508- 
510; of Brabant, 509; English, 36S ; 
French, 413-419 ; of 1830 in France, 496- 
497 ; of 1848, 447-449, 547-549. 

Rewbell, 430. 

Rhine, League of the, 364 ; Confederation 
of the, 441. 

Rhodes, 150. 

Rhodesia, 693. 

Ribera, 387. 

Ribot, M.. 597. 

Ricasoli, Baron, 611. 

Richard of Cornwall, Emperor, 262, 280. 

Richard Coeur de Lion, 238, 261. 

Richard II of England, 269. 

Eichard III of England, 297. 

Eichard, Duke of York, 295. 

Eichelieu, Cardinal, 294, 355-357, 361-362. 

Eicos hombres, 274. 

Eiego, 478. 

Eienzi, 277. 

Eight of Search, 450, 451, 536. 

Eigsdag, 062. 

Eimini, 541. 

Eing, the, camp of the Avars, 205. 

Eio Salado, battle of, 273. 

Eivoli, battle of, 431. 

Eobert, Duke of France, 212. 

Eobert, Duke of Normandy, 236. 

Eobert the Strong, 211. 

Eobert Wace, 225. 

Eobespierre, 425, 426, 427. 

Robespierre, the younger, 427. 

Eochambeau, General, 403. 



Roche Derien, battle of, 265. 

Rochefoucauld, Duke de la, 415. 

Eocroi, battle of, 357. 

Eoebuck, Mr., 680. 

Eoger II of Sicily, 232. 

Eoland, Madame, 426. 

Eollo, 212. 

Roman de Brut, 225. 

Romance, of the Rose, 249. 

Eomantic School, 480. 

Eome, ancient, 89-175 ; captured by Gauls, 
97 ; civil wars in, 106-114, 123-124 ; Em- 
pire of, 134-174 ; Alaric captures, 181- 
182; the Church in, 200-202, 278; and 
Eienzi, 277 ; in 1848, 564 ; the capital of 
united Italy, 612. . 

Eome, Bishop of. See Papacy. 

Eome, King of. See Napoleon IV. 

Eoncalia, Diet of, 231. 

Eoncesvaux, 205. 

Eoon, General von, 583. 

Eoosebec, battle of, 268. 

Eosbach, battle of, 398. 

Eoseberv, Lord, 688. 

Eoses, War of the, 295-297. 

Eossi, Count, 554. 565. 

Eouher, M., 575, 612. 

Eoumaiiia, 649-052. 

" Eoumania Irredenta," 652. 

Eoundheads, 368. 

Round Table, 225. ' 

Eousseau, 409. 

Eoxana, 79. 

Eoxolani, 150. 

Eoyale, 228. 

Eoyalty, Frankish, 187 ; Merovingian, 188- 
192; Carlovingian, 202-213; Capetian, 
251-257 ; Norman, in England, 258-259 ; 
progress of French, 289-293; English, 
295-298, 365-369, 370-371, 377-379 ; prog- 
ress of Spanish, 273-275, 299-302 ; Span- 
ish,under Philip II, 339, 349-350 ; French, 
under Henry IV, 351, and Eichelieu, 860- 
362, and Mazarin, 362-364, under Louis 
XIV, 372-376, 383, under Louis XV, 
393-394, under Louis XVI, 412, 414, 417- 
418, 424; and Napoleon I (coalitions of 
kings), 420-430, 446-454. 

Eover-Collard, 497. 

Eubens, 387. 

Eubicon, Ctsar crosses the, 124, 

Eiickert, 449. 

Eude, 480. 

Eudolph of Hapsburg, 280. 

Eue des Prouvaires, plot of, 502. 

Euel, peace of, 308. 

Eump Parliament, 369, 370. 

Eurik, 216, 284. 

Eussell, Lord John, 541, 678, 682. 

Eussia, foundation of state of, 216; Mon- 
gols in, 283, 284; creation of, 389-392 
under Catherine II, 405-407 ; and Napo 
leon I, 421, 428, 432, 436, 440, 450-451 
after 1815, 455, 456 ; progress of, in Asia, 
524-525 ; Crimean War, 568-570 ; and 
Turkey, 628 ; 1825 to 1898, 623-637. 

Eusso-Turkish War, 628-681, 651. 

Eyswick, treaty of, 381. 



INDEX 



739 



Sabaco, 2T, 38. 
Sabianism, 35. 
Sabinus, 146. 
Sachs, Hans, 319. 

Sacriportus, battle of, 112. 

Sadowa, battle of, 583-584, 618. 

Sagasta, 672, 673, 674. 

Saint Albans, battles of, 296. 

St. Arnaud, 560, 569. 

Saint Bartholomew, massacre of, 342, 344, 
345. 

Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, treaty of, 212. 

Saint Denis, battle of, 342.' 

Saint Germain, peace of, 342. 

Saint Helena, 454. 

Saint Hilaire, 481. 

Saint James of Castile, Order of, 245, 301. 

Saint Jean d'Acre, besieged by Crusaders, 
238 ; besieged by Napoleon, 432 ; cap- 
tured by Ibrahim Pasha, 521 ; English 
nearly destroy, 523. 

Saint John, Knights of, 335. 

Saint Just, 426, 427. 

Saint Louis. See Louis IX of France. 

Saint Mark, Republic of, 554. 

Saint Peter's built, 320. 

Saint Petersburg founded, 390. 

Saint Quentin, battle of, 338. 

Saint Simon, 385. 

Saint-Simonians, 482. 

Saint-Simonists, 502. 

Sainte-Beuve, 480. 

Saintes, battle of, 262. 

Saladin. 238. 

Saladin's tithe, 23S. 

Salamis, battle of, 66. 

Salic Law, 257. 

Salisbury, Lord, 632, 687. 688, 711. 

Sallust, 138. 

Salonica, 628. 

Salvandy, M. de, 548. 

Salvator Rosa, 387. 

Salvian, 169. 

Salvius Julianus, 149, 151. 

Samarcand, 198, 199. 

Samnite wars, 94-96. 

Samoan Islands, 697. 

Samson, 40. 

Samuel, 40. 

San Angelo, castle of, 149. 

San Domingo, 437. 

San Stephano, preliminary treaty of, 629, 
631, 652, 656. 

Sancho of Castile, Don, 273. 

Sancho III, king of Navarre, 244. 

Sand, 471. 

Santiago, 715. 

Sapor II, 169. 

Sarac, 33. 

Saracens, 203, 216-21T. 

Saratoga, battle of, 403. 

Sardanapalus, 33, 47. 

Sardis, burning of, 65. 

Sargon, 33. 

Saturninus, 110. 

Saturnus, 156. 

Saul, 41. 

Saumaise, 886. 



Sayonarola, Girolamo, 305, 306, 311. 

Saxe, Marshal, 397. 

Saxe-Coburg, Prince of, king of Belgium, 

509. 
Saxons, 178, 182, 183-184, 202, 203, 204, 

209, 390. 
Saxony, 227, 456, 457, 492, 513, 583. 
Saxony, Duke of, 353. 
Say, Leon, 590, 591. 
Scala, Cane della, 278. 
Scaliger, 386. 

Scanderbeg, Prince of Epirus, 308. 
Scandinavia, 282, 283. 
Scania, Code of, 282, 283. 
Schamyl, 524, 694. 
Scharnhorst, 448, 450. 
Scheffer, Ary, 480. 
Schenkendorff, 449. 
Scherer, General, 432. 
Schiller, 421. 

Schleswig-Holstein, 580-581, 582-583, 584. 
Schmerling, 617, 618. 
Schouvaloflf, Count, 632. 
Schwartzenberg, Prince, 561, 562, 617. 
Scipio Asiaticus, 103. 
Scipio, Cneus, 100. 
Scipio, Cornelius, 100. 
Scipio, Pubhus (Africanus), in Africa, 100, 

101 ; in Asia Minor, 103 ; in Spain, 105. 
Scotland, 223, 255, 325, 399. 
Scots, 183. 

Scourge of God. See Attila. 
Scrutin d'arrondissement, 593, 594. 
Scrutin de liste, 593, 594. 
Sebastopol, built, 406 ; siege of, 569-570. 
Sebichus, 27. 
Secret societies, 469-470. 
Sedan, 577. 

Sedgemoor, battle of, 378. 
Sejanus, 139, 140. 
Seleucia, 148, 150. 
Seleucida?, dynasty of the, 82. 
Seleucus Nicator, 82. 
Self-denying ordinance, 369. 
Selim I the Ferocious, 309. 
Semiramis, queen of Assyria, 33. 
"Semiramis of the North," 283. 
Semites, 5-6. 
Sempach, battle of, 281. 
Seneca, 141, 142. 
Senef, battle of, 374. 
Senis, truce of, 291 ; treaty of, 294, 303. 
Sennacherib, 33, 37. 
Sepoys, 681, 682. 
Septimius Severus, 152-153. 
Serfs, 221 ; emancipation of, '148, 626. 
Sergeant King, the, 395. 
Sergius, Pope, 202. 
Serrano, Marshal. 670, 671. 
Serres, Olivier de, 351. 
Serrurier, Marshal, 439. 
Sertorius, 112, 114. 
Servetus, Michael, 324. 
Servia, 653-654. 
ServiUus, 111. 
Servius Tullius, 89-90. 
Sesostris, 26. 
Seti I, 26. 



740 



INDEX 



Seven Years' War, 395, 397-398. 

Severus, 161. 

Sevign^, Madame de, 385. 

Seward, William H., 706. 

Sextius, 93. 

Seymour, Sir Hamilton, 624. 

Sforza, Francesco, 304. 

Shakespeare, 350, 386. 

Shalmaneser, 33. 

Shamgar, 40. 

Sheik-ul-Islam, 644. 

Shiites, the, 196. 

Shimonoseki, treaty of, 695. 

ShipkaPass, 630. 

Ship-money, 367. 

Sicilian expedition, Athens', 71. 

Sicilian Vespers, massacre of the, 255, 274, 

276. 
Sieyes, 433, 434. 
Sigebert, 190. 
Sigismund, Emperor, 281. 
Silesia, 357, 396. 397, 398. 
Silistria, defence of, 640. 
Sihus, 141. 

Simancas, battle of, 243. 
Simnel, Lambert, 297. 
Simon, Jules, 577, 590, 592. 
Simonides, 86. 

Simpson, General James, 569. 
Singapore, 525. 
Sistova, peace of, 421. 
Sittius, 119. 
Siva, 20. 

Sixtus IV, Pope, 306. 
Sixtus V, Pope, 329, 331. 
Skobelelf, General, 630. 
Skoupchtina, 658. 

Slave-trade, English abolition of, 484. 
Slavery abolished in Cuba, 713. 
Slavs, 178, 205, 217, 283, 284, 620. 
Slivnitza, battle of, 654, 657. 
Sluggard Kings, 192. 
Sluice, battle of the, 264. 
Smerdis, 48, 49. 
Smolensk, battle of, 451. 
Sobieski, 407. 
Sobranie, 656. 

Social Contract, Rousseau's, 409. 
Social War, 110. 
Socialism, German, 606. 
Society Islands, France acquires the, 536. 
Socrates, 69, 72. 
Scemis, 154. 
Sogdian Eock, 79. 
Soissons, Council of, 254. 
Soissons, Count of, 362. 
Solferino, battle of, 571, 609. 
Solomon, 41, 42. 
Solon, 62-03. 
Sophocles, 69, 86, 
Sonderbund, 537, 664. 
Soudan, 687, 693. 
Soujah, Shah, 527. 
Souleiman the Magnificent, 309, 335, 336, 

337, 343. 
Souleiman Pasha, 630. 
Soult (Marshal), 439, 453, (President of 

Council) 506. 



Spain, conquest of, by Eomans, 104; ex- 
tent in ninth century, 223 ; 1250 to 1453, 
273-275 ; progress of royalty in, 299-301 ; 
under Philip II, 339-347, 349; letters 
and arts in, 386, 387 ; and Napoleon I, 
427, 428, 442, 444, 449, 450, 453; after 
1815, 464, 471-472, 478; absolutism in, 
493 ; revolutions of 1833, 511 ; 1833 to 
1898, 669-675. 

Spanish America, 486, 544. 

Spanish-American War, 675, 712-716. 

Spanish Succession, War of the, 381-382. 

Spanish succession question of 1870, 576. 

Sparta, 60-62, 66, 70-74, 84. 

Spartacus, 118. 

Specuhun Majus, 249. 

Speranse d? Italie^ 533. 

Sphinx, 31. 

Spinoza, 387. 

Spu-es, Diet of, 323. 

Spurs, battle of, 313. 

Staaps, 448. 

Stabiae, 146. 

Stael, Madame de, 438. 

Staflfarde, battle of, 381. 

Stafford, Viscount, 377. 

Stambouloif, M., 657, 658. 

Stanislaus Lechzinski, 390, 394. 

Star Chamber, 297. 

State Council, Swiss, 664. 

States General, 256, 265, 266, 293, 312, 360, 
414. 

Steamboats, first French, 481. 

Stein, Baron, 448, 449, 451, 452, 585. 

Stephen II, Pope, 203. 

Stephen of Blois, 236, 260. 

Stilicho, 180. 

Stockach, battle of, 432. 

Stockholm founded, 283. 

Stoics, 145. 

Stoiloflf, Dr., 657. 

Stolberg, Count von, 467. 

Strabo, 138. 

Strafford, Earl of, 367, 368. 

Straits, treaty of the, 523, 532. 

Strasburg, battle of, 170; taken by Ger- 
mans. 578. 

Stuart, Charles, the Pretender, 397, 399. 

Stuarts, the, 297, 365, 370-371. 

Suabia, house of, established in southern 
Italy, 232 ; extinction of, 276. 

Sublime, Longinus' treaty on the, 157. 

Suetonius, 140. 

Suevi, the, 122, 178, 181, 183, 185. 

Suez Canal, 643, 685, 697. 

Sulla, 110-114. 

Sully, 351. 

Sulpicius, 111. 

Summa Theologies, 249. 

Sunnites, 196. 

Susa, 148. 

Sussex, 184. 

Sweden, 224, 282, 323, 390-391, 511, 663. 

Swein, 215. 

Switzerland, 281. 510, 537, 663-665; and 
Charles the Bold, 292 ; the Reformation 
in, 324 ; and Napoleon 1, 421, 439. 

Syagrius, 182, 188. 



INDEX 



741 



Sylvester II, Pope, 224. 

Symbologism and Mythology, 480. 
Symmachus, 185. 
Syphax, 100. 
Syracuse, 71, 100. 
Syria, 82, 521-622. 

TaaflFe, Count, 622. 

Tacitus, historian, 140. 

Tacitus, Roman emperor, 157. 

Tagliacozzo, battle of, 276. 

Tahiti, 536. 

Taillebourg, battle of, 262. 

Talbot, Lord, 271. 

Talleyrand, 442, 453, 456, 459. 

Tallien, 427. 

Tamatave, 593. 

Tamerlane, 12, 285. 

Tanucci, 410. 

Tarik, 196. 

Tartars, 182, 889. 

Tartvffe, 480. 

Taylor, President, 701. 

Tchandragoupta, 18. 

Tchernaieff, General, 628, 

Tchernaya, battle of, 569, 609. 

Tegetthoff. Admiral, 584. 

Telamon, battle of, 97. 

Telemaque. Fenelon's, 385. 

Temesvar, battle of, 562. 

Templar, Knights, 237, 240, 256, 

Temple at Jerusalem, built, 46 ; burned 

by Romans, 145. 
Temudjin, 10. 11. 
Tonchebray, battle of, 259. 
Ten Thousand, expedition of the, 72. 
Teniers, the two, 387. 
Terentillus Arsa, 91. 
Terray, Abbe, 412. 

Terror, Reign of, 425-427 ; White, 464, 
Tertullian, 153, 169. 
Test Bill, 371, 377. 
Testry, battle of, 192. 
Tetrarchy, Roman, 159. 
Tetzel, 321, 322. 
Teuta, 103. 

Teutoberg, forest of, 138. 
Teutones, 109. 
Teutonic Order, 241, 323. 
Tewksbury, battle of, 297. 
Thapsus, battle of, 125. 
Tharaka, 27. 
Theatines, the, 329. 
Thebes, 52, 70, 73-74, 75, 76, 78. 
The Hague, triple alliance of, 371, 373. 
Themistocles, 04, 65, 66. 
Thenard, 481. 
Theodoric, 184-185, 189. 
Theodosian Code, 185, 
Theodosius, 173. 
Theodosius II, 185. 
Theophania, Princess, 228. 
Thermidor, Ninth of, 426-427. 
Thermopylae, 66. 
Theseus, 52. 
Thessalonica, 173. 
Thessaly, 75, 78, 660. 
Thetes, 63. 



Thierry, king of Austria, 190. 

Thierry, Augustin, 469, 480. 

Thiers, 502, 505, 523, 547, 548, 576, 577, 

57S, 579, 5S7, 588, 591. 
Third Estate, 293, 360, 414. 
Thirty Tyrants, period of the, 156. 
Thirty Years' War, 353-357. 
Thistlewood, 471. 
Thomas, General, 587. 
Thorn, treaty of. 283. 
Thothmes I, 26. 
Thothmes III, 26. 
Thouars, Admiral Dupetit, 536. 
Thrace, 72, 75, 78, 141. 
Thrasyboulos, 72. 

Three Emperors, Alliance of the, 601, 
Three Henrys, War of the, 345. 
Thucydides, 69, 86. 
Thuringia, 228. 
Tiberius, 138-140. 
Tibullus, 138. 
Ticinus, battle of, 99. 
Tien Tsin, treaty of, 681. 
Tiglathpileser, 33. 
Tigranes, 116, 117. 
Tigranocerta, 117. 
Tilden, Samuel J., 707. 
Tilly, General, 355, 356. 
Tilsit, treaty of, 443. 
Timur the Lame, 12. 
Tippo Sahib, 401, 424. 
Tirard, M., 594, 595. 
Tirnova, 656. 
Titian, 320. 
Titus, 145-146. 
Todleben, General, 569, 630. 
Togrul Beg, 197. 
Tolstoi, Count, 635. 
Tonquin, 598. 
Torcy, Marquis de, 350. 
ToriceUi, 388. 
Torquatus, ManUus, 94. 
Torquemada, 301. 
Torstenson, General, 356. 
Toul, 337, 578. 
Toulouse, battle of, 453. 
Tourmantchai, treaty of, 525, 526. 
Tours, battle of, 196, 202. 
Tourville, 380. 
Towton, battle of, 296. 
Trafalgar, battle of, 440. 
Tragala, the, 477. 
Trajan, 147. 
Tra'ian, Column of, 147. 
Tralles, 130. 
Transleithania, 619. 
Transvaal, 693. 
Transvaal Republic, 685. 
Trebia, battle of (b.c. 218), 99, (a.d, 1798) 

432, 
Trent, Council of, 330. 
Trent affair, 683. 
Tribunal of Blood, 342-543. 
Tribunal of History, 9. 
Tribunes in Rome, 90 ; military, 93. 
Tribur, Diet of (887), 212, (1076) 230. 
Tricoupis, M., 059. 
Triple Alliance, 603. 



742 



INDEX 



Triumvirate, First, 121 ; Second, 127. 

Trochu, General, 577. 

Trogus Pompeius, 138. 

Troia, battle of, 806. 

Trojan War, 52-53. 

Tro'nchet, 435. 

Troppeau, Congress of, 475. 

Troubadours, 225. 

Trouv^res, 225. 

Troyes, treaty of, 270. 

Truce of God, 220. 

Truchsess, Gebhard von, 354. 

True Law of Free Monarchy, 366. 

Tserkoria, battle of, 630. 

Tsin dynasty, 9, 12. 

Tsin-Chi-Hoang-Ti, 9. 

Tudor dynasty, 297. 

Tugendbund, 448. 

Tuileries, built, 320 ; burned, 588. 

Tunis, 240, 336, 592, 614. 

Turenne, 364, 374. 

Turgot, 412. 

Turin, battle of, 382. 

Turkey, 406; recognizes Grecian inde- 
pendence, 489 ; war with Russia, 491 ; 
key to one division of Eastern question, 
519, See Ottoman Empire. 

Tuscany, 223, 276, 609. 

Twelve Tables, the, 91. 

Two Sicilies, 233, 274, 301, 463, 607, 610, 
611. 

Tyre, 37, 41, 78, 237. 

Tyrtaeus, 62. 

Ugolino, 277. 

Ulm, 440. 

Ulphilas, Bishop, 169. 

Ulpianus, 154. 

Ultramontanism, 347, 353. 

Unam sanctam, papal bull, 256. 

Union, Birmingham, 485; of Calmar, 283 ; 

Electoral, 303 ; Evangelical, 354. 
United Provinces, 346, 352, 382. See 

Belgium, Holland, Netherlands. 
United States, 402-404, 544^546, 700-716; 

war with England (1812), 450-451 ; and 

Napoleon III, 574 ; and Cuba, 674-675. 
University, of Berlin, 449 ; of Besanpon, 

293 ; of Caen, 293 ; of Paris, 248, 249, 

290, 475. 
Unterwalden, 281, 324, 664. 
Urban II. Pope, 235. 
Urban IV, Pope, 276. 
Urban V, Pope, 269. 
Urban VI, Pope, 278. 
Uri, 281, 324, 664. 
Uriah, 41. 
Utrecht, treaty of, 383 ; peace of, 399. 

Vaccination discovered, 408. 
Vaccination Commission, 476. 
Vadier, 427. 
Valdez, General, 674. 
Valens, 172. 
Valentinian I, 166, 172. 
Valentinian II, 172, 187. 
Valerian, 155. 
Valerius Flaccus, 112. 



Valmik, 17. 

Valmy, battle of, 424. 

Valois dynasty, 257. 

Vandals, 150, 160, 178, 181, 185, 186. 

Van Dyck, 387. 

Varennes, 418. 

Varius, 138. 

Varna, battle of, 282, 285. 

Varus, 138. 

Vasco de Gama, 18, 275, 314. 

Vassos, Colonel, 647, 660. 

Vassy, massacre of, 341. 

Vatican library, 279, 331. 

Vauban, 373, 381. 

Vaudois, massacre of the, 325. 

Vedas, 17. 

Vega, Lope de, 386. 

Veil, siege of, 93. 

Velasquez, 387. 

Velutina, battle of, 451. 

Vendean war, 425, 428. 

Vendemiaire, Thirteenth of, 429. 

Vendome, Duke of, 382. 

Venedi, 191. 

Venezuela, 711. 

Venezuelan message, 711. 

Vent, vicli, mci, 124. 

Venice, 182, 223, 240, 277, 278, 279, 304, 
309, 311, 312, 313, 554, 611, 612. 

Ventura, Father, 541, 542. 

Vercellae, battle of, 109. 

Vercingetorix, 123. 

Verdun, treaty of, 210; captured by the 
Germans, 578. 

Vermandois, Lord of, 266. 

Verona, Congress of (1822), 475, (1823) 

485. 
Versailles, peace of (1783), 403; States 
General at, 414 ; attacked, 417 ; German 
Empire proclaimed at, 578, 586 ; seat of 
French government, 590. 
Verus, 150. 

Vervins, treaty of, 348, 351. 
Vespasian, 144-145. 
Vespucci, Amerigo, 315. 
Vesuvius, great eruption of, 146. 
Vezelay, assembly of, 237. 
Vichnegradzy, 636. 
Victor Emmanuel, 564, 608-614. 
Victoria of Germany, Empress, 604. 
Victoria, Queen, 678-690. 
Vienna, treaty of (1738), 394 ; occupied by 
Napoleon I, 440, 444; peace of (1809), 
444; Congress of (1815), 455-458, (1820) 
474 ; in 1848, 552 ; treaty of (1864), 582. 
"Vienna note," 625. 
Vikings, 214. 

Villafranca, peace of, 572, 609, 610. 
Villagos, 562. 
Villalar, battle of, 301. 
Villaret-Joyeuse, Admiral, 428. 
Villars, 382. 

Villaviciosa, battle of, 382. 
Villehardouin, Geotfroy de, 238, 249. 
Villeins, 221. 
Villele, 464. 
Villemain, 480. 
Villeneuve, Admiral, 440. 



INDEX 



'43 



Villeroi, 382. , . ^ 

Villiei-s, George, Marquis of Buckmgnaui, 

3G6, 367. 
Villiers de I'lsle Adam, 335. 
Villon, 293. 
Vilna, treaty of, 3S9. 
Vincent de Ileauvais, 249. 
Vincenza, 2T8. 
Vindex, 143. 
Virgil, 130, 13T, 138. 
Virginia, 350. 
Viriathus, 104. 
Virtue, Association of, 448. 
Visconti, the, 2T8, 304. 
Visconti, Gian Galeozzo, 2T8. 
Visconti, Matteo, 278. 
Visconti, Philip Marie, 278. 
Vishnu, 17, 20. 
Visigoths, ISO, 182, 196, 201. 
Vitellius, 144. 
Vitesk, battle of, 451. 
Vladimir, brother of Tsar Alexander III, 

636. 
Volkshein, battle of, 280. 
Volta, 408. 
Voltaire, 409, 410. 

Waddington, M., 591, 632. 

Wagram, battle of. 444. 

Wahabites, 520. 

Wakefield, battle of, 29^6. 

Waldeck-Kousseau, 597. 

Waldemar the Victorious, 282. 

"Waldenses, 476. 

Waldersee. Count of. 605. 

Wallace, William, 255, 263. 

Wallachia, 309, 649, 650. 

Wallenstein, 355, 356. 

Wallia, 181. 

Walloon language, 225. 

Walpole, Sir Kobert, 399. 

Walter the Penniless, 236. 

War of 1812, 450-451. 

War of 1859, Italian, 609. 

War of the Nations, 194. 

Warbeck, Perkin, 297. 

Warsaw, 516. 517, 637. 

Warwick, "the king-maker," 296, 297. 

Washington, George, 403-404. 

Washington, treaty of, 707. 

Waterloo, battle of, 454. 

Wattignies, battle of, 428. 
. Wawre, battle of. 516. 

Webster, Daniel, 701. 

Weissenburg, battle of, 576. 

Welfs, 231. 

Welker, 475. 

Wellington, 450, 453, 454, 477, 494, 507. 
508 

Welsh, 183. 

Wenceslas, Emperor, 278, 281. 

Wessex, 184. 

Westminster, 485. 

Westphalia, peace of, 357, 358-359 ; treaty 
.. of, 395. 

White Caps, insurrection of the, 269. 

Wessir Pasha, 631. 

West Indies, Dutch, 667. 



Weyler, General, 674, 713. 

White, Sir William, 648. 

Wliite Mountain, battle of, 355. 

White Sheep, dynasty of the, 30S. 

Wiclitfe, John, 269. 

Wied, Pi-incess of, 651. 

Wilberforce, 484. 

Wilhelm of Denmark, Prince, 659, 663. 

Wilhelmina of Holland, Queen, 667. 

William the C'onqueror, 258, 259. 

William II Paifus, 259. 

William III of England (Prince of Orange), 

374, 375, 378, 399. 
William I (king of Prussia), 576, 581-586, 

(Emperor of Germany) 601, 604. 
William II of Germany, Emperor, 604- 

606. 
William II of Holland, 666. 
William III of Holland, 667. 
William the Silent, 340, 345, 346, 667. 
William Tell, 281. 
Willoughb}'-, Lieutenant, 682. 
Wilson, M., 593. 
Winchester, Cardinal of, 271. 
Windischgriitz, 561. 
Witikind, 204. 
Witt, Jan de, 374. 
Wittenagemot, 215. 
Wittenberg, 321. 
Wolfenbuttel, battle of, 357. 
Wolselev, General, 686. 
Wolsey," 333, 334. 
AVoodford, General, 675, 715. 
Worcester, battle of, 368 ; second battle of, 

369. 
Workingmen's Association, 535. 
Worms, Synod of, 230; Concordat of, 

231 ; Diet of, 322. 
Worth, battle of, 576. 
Won Wang, prince of Tchu, 9. 
Wurmser, General, 431. 
Wurschen, battle of, 453. 
Wiirtemberg, 457, 585, 600. 
Wiirzburg, battle of, 431. 

Xaintrailles. 271. 
Xenophon, 69, 72, 81. 
Xeres, battle of, 196, 243. 
Xerxes, 66. 
Ximenes, Cardinal, 301. 

Yama, 20. 

Yassy, treaty of, 623. 
Yen dynasty, 11. 
Yermouk, battle of the, 196. 
Yezdegerd, 196. 
York, General, 451. 
York, house of, 295-297. 
Yorktown, 403. 
Young Ireland party, 679. 
Young Turkey party, 645. 
Yu, Chinese emperor, 8. 
Yusuf Izeddin, 645. 

Zacharias, Pope, 203. 
Zalaca, battle of, 244, 
Zama, battle of, 101. 
Zankoff, M., 656, 657. 



744 



INDEX 



Zapoli, John, 335. 

Zedekiah, 42. 

Zeno, 184, 185. 

Zenobia, 156, 157. 

Zenta, battle of, 396. 

Zerubbabel, 43. 

Zervane Akerene, 45. * 

Zeus, 57. 

Zeuxis Polygnotus, 69. 

Zewin, battle of, 629. 

Zisca, John, 282. 

Zizim, brother of Bayezid II, 311. 



Zodiac, 35. 

Zola, 598. 

Zollverein, 494, 513, 603. 

Zorndorf, battle of, 398. 

Zoroaster, 45, 46. 

Zug, 281, 664. 

Zulu war, 685. 

Zumalacarreguy, 512. 

Zurich, battle of, 432; treaty of (1852). 

572, (1859) 610. 
Zwingli, 324. 



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